"Daniel Keys Moran - Armageddon Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Georges could not think clearly; there was a vast pain in his neck that was only beginning to abate. The
terrain about them seemed vaguely familiar. After nearly a kilometer, the retreat slowed, then stopped;
they began digging in, grimly determined that the Germans would go no further.

Night descended like a raven. Soldiers were still stringing barbed wire on grimy, rotting wood posts and
the shattered fragments of shell-torn trees. They had to pull dead men off some of the trees before they
could use them. Georges and the remains of his companyтАФHenriтАФsat in the muddy trenches, trying to
nurse a small fire raised a few inches over the mud. They were having some success, more than anyone
else, but still the flame was weak.

Georges had not spoken since awakening. When Henri spoke to him, he found himself unable to
answer, having, uh, no vocal cords to speak of. They knitted as the night wore on; the scar on his neck
began to fade. Near midnight, he whispered, in a voice like ground glass, "Henri? What happened to
me?"

Henri was hunched over the small fire, trying to light a damp cigarette that was already half smoked. He
finally produced a dim glow in the tip of the cigarette, and sat back against the trench wall. "Don't know,
Georges. German stuck youтАж" He hesitated. "It looked like your head came off. That's just what it
looked like." He shrugged indifferently. "I shot the German. When I looked again your head was in place
and there was a bleeding gash all around your neck."

Georges touched the skin above his collar. There was a thin ridge he could barely feel. He nodded. "I
used to wonder if I could die."

"Georges?"

"This area looks familiar," whispered Georges. "I think this is where General Dumouriez stopped the
Prussians, when they were trying to help King Louis restore the monarchy. The day after the battleтАж"
He shook his head, and winced at the faint ghost of pain. "That was September 20. In 1792. The next
day the National Convention declared we were a Republic." Henri was staring at him, wide-eyed, across
the fire. "In January," said Georges in a voice distant with memory, "we cut King Louis' head off."

Henri turned his face away from Georges, and drew his coat about himself. He clutched his rifle tightly.
(In the morning he was gone, and that was the last time Georges saw him, because three days later, while
taking a hill that nobody gave a damn about anyway, he became a hero of the French Republic, his last
thoughts being of Georges Mordreaux. Ironically, it was a German boy with a bayonet who got him too,
although the resemblance stops there. The German boyтАФhe was actually younger than Henri, and his
name is unimportant, since like Henri he did not survive the warтАФthis German boy put his bayonet in
from behind, and the corporal did not resurrect. Ah, well.)

Georges spent the rest of the night trying to whistle. He did quite creditably.

Georges thought, with some irritation at himself, that there ought to be some point to be learned from
having one's head cut off, and surviving the experience. He could not think of one, however, aside from
the obvious. He was very glad to be alive.

In some ways,thought Georges Mordreaux,I ama very shallow fellow.
Ah, well.