As the war drew nearer, the air in the city grew strangely clear.
The emergency sirens did not wail.
No thunder of artillery reached the ears.
And yet, the people rose earlier than before.
They left their windows open longer than usual, and when they closed their doors, they checked the latches a second time.
The lines in front of the bakeries stretched further, and idle chatter vanished from the trams.
In its place came the rustle of folding newspapers, the frantic clicking of radio dials, and the rhythmic strike of boot heels against cobblestone.
A queue formed in front of the conscription office before dawn.
No one had ordered them to arrive early.
No one had organized the line.
One man had simply stood there first, and others naturally followed.
The line was silent, but it simmered with a quiet, volcanic intensity.
They swallowed their words, exhaled long breaths, and stared at the door over the shoulders of those in front of them.
The man who entered as soon as the doors opened was nineteen years old.
His face was hard, but his eyes were still the soft eyes of a youth.
Clutched in his hand was his workplace identification card.
Locomotive Factory, Lathe Apprentice.
The grease ingrained in the joints of his fingers refused to wash away.
The grime beneath his fingernails remained no matter how much he scrubbed.
There was a persistent scent of lubricant and cold iron that clung to him, a smell that even a long soak in a washbasin could not erase.
He stood before the registration desk.
He caught his breath and spoke.
"I am here to volunteer for enlistment."
The registration clerk did not look up, simply sliding a form forward.
Only the dry rasp of paper moving echoed between them.
"Name."
"Karl Schmidt."
"Age."
"Nineteen."
"Occupation."
Schmidt hesitated for a moment.
He realized with a start that the line between his job and his way of survival had blurred at some point.
Still, his voice remained steady.
"Factory apprentice."
The clerk's pen paused mid-stroke.
"Locomotive factory?"
"Yes."
A soldier at the adjacent desk looked up.
He scanned Schmidt's hands.
His gaze trailed over the small scars on the back of the hands, caught on the calluses on the palms, and then rose back to the face.
"Those are good hands."
It was less of a compliment and more of a verification.
'Hands that can handle machines can handle rifles and cannons.'
It was a cold, utilitarian assessment.
The registration clerk asked again.
"You aren't at the mandatory conscription age yet. Why come now?"
Schmidt opened his mouth, then closed it.
He had too many reasons.
The story of Stahlenkrug he heard on the radio.
The photographs published in the newspapers.
The rumors that circulated through the factory dormitory every night.
And yesterday, a single comment tossed out by his foreman, hands still black with oil.
The Gallic legions were coming from the East.
Those words had gnawed at Schmidt's insides.
It wasn't a knock on the door or a request for entry; it felt like someone simply turning the handle and walking in. As if his home were no longer his home.
Schmidt looked down at the floor and spoke.
"When a thief breaks into your house, you have to drive him out, don't you?"
The clerk neither nodded nor changed his expression. He simply flipped the page, as if he had heard this exact answer every day.
"Very well. Next."
With that, Schmidt was issued a red cloth armband.
It was a thin strip of fabric, but its texture against his palm felt jarringly vivid.
Someone pulled the knot tight, securing it to his arm.
For a second, his breath hitched.
One side of his body suddenly felt heavy.
It was the moment the realization became concrete: his life was no longer his own, anchored by a single thin piece of cloth.
He stepped outside and looked toward the end of the queue.
The line had grown even longer.
It wasn't just a line of men in overalls.
There were students who had cast aside their school uniforms (who were promptly chased away by the guards), mechanics with the smell of grease in their hair, and clerks with ink stains on their hands.
One man pulled a wedding ring from his finger, tucked it into his pocket, and took his place in line.
His hand paused for the briefest of moments when the ring left his skin.
Whether his fingers felt empty or his pocket felt too full, his expression gave nothing away.
The woman who appeared to be his wife did not cry.
Her face showed she already knew that tears would only serve to hold him back.
Instead, she reached out and straightened his collar.
Pretending to brush off dust, when in reality, she simply couldn't bear to let go of him yet.
Later that afternoon, Schmidt did not return to the factory.
Instead, he moved to the training grounds. The area was a cluttered mess, as if a schoolyard and a warehouse had been forcibly stitched together.
Yet within that disorder, rules and discipline were rapidly taking shape.
Whistles blew, lines were dressed, and names were barked out.
The people moved sometimes with uncertainty and sometimes with rigid conformity.
"Karl Schmidt."
As he stepped forward, an instructor clapped him on the shoulder. It was a light touch, almost playful, but his body followed the motion a half-beat late.
"You've worked with machinery before?"
"Yes. I have."
"Then you might be headed to the field artillery as an assistant. Any objections?"
Schmidt shook his head immediately. The answer came faster than he expected.
"No objections."
The instructor smiled.
"Good. I appreciate your willingness to serve."
Some time passed after he was issued his rifle.
In a corner of the training ground, someone was crying silently.
It was a twenty-year-old man, his hands trembling as he held his rifle.
His face, where tears pooled without a sound, spoke volumes of his state of mind.
Beside him, another volunteer placed a hand on his shoulder without a word.
It wasn't so much a gentle comfort as it was a steadying hand, intended to keep him from crumbling.
Watching this, Schmidt realized something.
Perhaps what was needed here wasn't grand courage, but simply a way to endure.
And learning how to endure wasn't a lesson one learned alone.
************************
Meanwhile, there was another line.
Beside the conscription office, a separate booth had been established for temporary nursing staff.
Twenty-three-year-old Abigail stood in that queue.
She had been an elementary school teacher.
She took pride in her ability to memorize children's names and her beautiful handwriting on the chalkboard.
But now, that pride seemed useless.
A different kind of confidence was required to pass through this door.
The confidence to look at blood-stained hands without panicking, and to keep one's breathing steady.
A military surgeon sat behind the desk.
He looked exhausted.
Abigail handed over her papers and spoke.
"I've come to volunteer as a nurse."
The surgeon looked up.
"Do you have nursing experience?"
"No."
"Then why are you here?"
Abigail had prepared a speech, but the words died in her throat.
If they sounded too grand, they would feel like a lie; if they were too honest, she might seem weak. In the end, only the simplest truth emerged.
"I was teaching children. They're frightened. So... I want to help, however little I can."
The surgeon watched her for a long time.
It wasn't an eye that judged, but one that calculated.
Where could he place this person so she would endure the longest? Where would she be most useful? It was that kind of calculation.
"You might faint when you see the blood."
Abigail nodded.
"If I faint... I will get back up."
Only after she finished speaking did she realize her hands were clenched into fists.
Her nails were digging into her palms, leaving marks.
It didn't hurt, but the fact that she was gripping her own resolve without even realizing it made something swell within her chest.
The surgeon let out a tiny laugh.
"That's what they all say."
He scribbled something with his pen and stamped the paper.
"Training first. And you said you were an elementary teacher? You must have good handwriting."
"Yes."
"We need recording clerks too. Field hospitals are always short on paper. And even shorter on hands."
Abigail felt a long breath of relief escape her.
The fear hadn't vanished. It had simply shifted. It moved from a vague, looming terror to a list of tasks to be completed.
The training facility she was sent to was a renovated hospital basement.
The floor was cold and the lighting was dim.
One person explained how to wrap bandages; another demonstrated how to tighten a tourniquet.
They even explained where to grip a stretcher handle so your hands wouldn't slip.
Watching the knots being tied, Abigail thought of her classroom.
The faces of children tearfully struggling to tie their laces. She could almost feel the sensation of her own hands tying knots for them.
The possibility that she might one day save a life with those same knots flickered through her mind.
************************************
The trains heading east did not stop even at night.
The lack of streetlamps on the platform meant the people's faces were only half-visible.
Those half-seen faces were set in expressions of grim determination.
The days when the International Brigades arrived were particularly tumultuous.
They did not speak in a single tongue.
Different accents, different curses, and different laughter all mingled together.
Someone started to sing off-key but stopped; someone put a cigarette in his mouth but failed to light it.
One man stood frozen for a long time even with a match in his hand.
The wind was strong, but his heart had wavered first.
Despite their different languages, they held the same rifles and wore the same uniforms.
The objective was the same.
To defend the Revolution.
On the other hand, the Internal Troops were different from the International Brigades.
Their uniforms were neater, their gazes colder.
Having suppressed the Yorkshire uprisings, thwarted spy infiltrations, and crushed small-scale revolts by dissidents, they were men of real combat experience.
Amidst them on the platform were the new conscripts.
Men who were working in factories yesterday, students who were in classrooms, fishmongers who were in the markets. Some limped because their boots didn't fit; others held their rifles awkwardly, their shoulders twitching incessantly.
They felt a strange sense of reassurance watching the International Brigades.
Under normal circumstances, the fact that strangers were intervening in their war might have been uncomfortable.
But these men were different.
The fact that strangers stood with them felt like proof that they were not alone.
Knowing this war wasn't theirs alone seemed to steel their hearts.
And that night, varied sounds echoed through the assembly point of the Eastern Army Group.
The sound of shell crates being loaded onto trucks.
The crunch of field artillery wheels through the mud.
The stacking of bandage boxes.
The heavy thud of ration flour bags hitting the ground.
Human voices could be heard in the distance.
They weren't chanting slogans.
Instead of synchronized shouts, words flowed out in ragged, differing rhythms.
Someone peppered their speech with curses, someone's words were cut short by laughter, someone else mumbled the same sentence over and over.
Every person had a different way of holding their heart steady with their mouth.
And someone was watching all of it.
He had no rank insignia, no medals.
He could have answered if asked his name, but no one bothered to ask.
He was a supply officer stationed at a field supply depot beside the main road to the east.
He was a man who held a file rather than a rifle, a man who wrote down numbers rather than firing bullets.
His weapons were his pencil, his ledger, and the belief that reports must arrive on time.
He watched the truck convoys under the night sky.
The trucks carried shells, bandage boxes, and bags of grain.
The soldiers sitting atop them were dozing. Even in sleep, they didn't let go of their weapons.
Someone loosened their helmet strap, then tightened it again.
They needed to loosen it to breathe, but the moment they did, anxiety seemed to take hold.
A soldier from the International Brigade laughed in his sleep.
His face hardened immediately after.
Even he didn't seem to know why he had laughed.
It was as if his tension was leaking out.
The Internal Troops passed by next.
They did not laugh.
Instead of laughter, they checked each other's shoulder straps, inspected their gear, and nodded silently.
They nodded so rapidly and simultaneously that it was impossible to tell who had started first.
And finally, the new recruits passed by.
Their footsteps were uneven.
Some walked too fast, some too slow.
One man who had come in civilian shoes had heels rubbed raw and black; another continued walking with his laces untied until a kind-hearted soldier behind him bent down to tie them.
But they were not a rabble.
They loved their democratic Union more than anyone; they loved the Party that had given them homes and jobs, and they loved the land upon which they lived.
They marched forward vigorously, singing military songs and chanting for the People's Army.
The observer noted everything on his paper.
Arriving personnel. Ammunition counts. Shell loads. Field hospital bed capacity.
He dutifully recorded number after number.
Then, his pencil stopped.
In his recording, he had accidentally written the same entry twice.
Realizing his mistake, he reached for his eraser.
Eraser dust clung to the back of his hand.
But for some reason, his hand took an unusually long time to brush the dust away.
As if the dust wasn't the only thing he was trying to brush off.
He gripped the pencil again.
Just as he was about to continue writing his figures,
A group of wounded soldiers entered the supply depot.
These were injuries from transit rather than combat.
Soldiers who had fallen and sprained ankles, those who had cut their hands on equipment, those who had strained their backs pushing field guns.
Among the wounded, one man was wrapping a bloodied bandage around himself.
A nurse nearby stepped forward to help, but the man shook his head.
"I'm fine. Treat those who need it more urgently first."
The nurse hesitated.
Perhaps out of inexperience, she seemed to be weighing what her next move should be.
But soon she nodded and ran further inside.
She nearly slipped while running, but someone nearby caught her by the elbow.
The observer watched this scene and gripped his pencil once more.
He felt a sudden impulse.
He didn't want to record only numbers on the documents before him.
War seeks to erase the individual.
Before the calamity of war, a person becomes a mere statistic.
But the supply officer felt a deep-seated revulsion at the idea of leaving these people behind as nothing more than figures in a ledger.
In the margins of the paper, in the small remaining spaces, he began to write small notes.
He wrote of the people he saw today, the youths, the soldiers.
And finally, he looked toward the end of the road.
Gaul would come from that horizon.
That seemed an inescapable truth.
But it wasn't the only truth.
There were the people gathered here on this road right now.
The people who stood in line. The people who tied the knots. The people who wrote the lists. The people who tripped but kept walking.
It was not yet known who would win.
However, it was becoming increasingly clear who would not run away.
The supply officer pressed his lips together.
And he whispered a prayer to the heavens.
"... May they all return safely."
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