Under the Ridge, Ernest Hemingway

Under the Ridge

IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY WITH THE DUST blowing, we came back, dry-mouthed, nose-clogged and heavy-loaded, down out of the battle to the long ridge above the river where the Spanish troops lay in reserve.

I sat down with my back against the shallow trench, my shoulders and the back of my head against the earth, clear now from even stray bullets, and looked at what lay below us in the hollow. There was the tank reserve, the tanks covered with branches chopped from olive trees. To their left were the staff cars, mud-daubed and branch-covered, and between the two a long line of men carrying stretchers wound down through the gap to where, on the flat at the foot of the ridge, ambulances were loading. Commissary mules loaded with sacks of bread and kegs of wine, and a train of ammunition mules, led by their drivers, were coming up the gap in the ridge, and men with empty stretchers were walking slowly up the trail with the mules.

To the right, below the curve of the ridge, I could see the entrance to the cave where the brigade staff was working, and their signaling wires ran out of the top of the cave and curved on over the ridge in the shelter of which we lay.

Motorcyclists in leather suits and helmets came up and down the cut on their cycles or, where it was too steep, walking them, and leaving them beside the cut, walked over to the entrance to the cave and ducked inside. As I watched, a big Hungarian cyclist that I knew came out of the cave, tucked some papers in his leather wallet, walked over to his motorcycle and, pushing it up through the stream of mules and stretcher-bearers, threw a leg over the saddle and roared on over the ridge, his machine churning a storm of dust.

Below, across the flat where the ambulances were coming and going, was the green foliage that marked the line of the river. There was a large house with a red tile roof and there was a gray stone mill, and from the trees around the big house beyond the river came the flashes of our guns.

They were firing straight at us and there were the twin flashes, then the throaty, short bung-bung of the three-inch pieces and then the rising cry of the shells coming toward us and going on over our heads. As always, we were short of artillery. There were only four batteries down there, when there should have been forty, and they were firing only two guns at a time. The attack had failed before we came down.

“Are you Russians?” a Spanish soldier asked me.
“No, Americans,” I said. “Have you any water?”

“Yes, comrade.” He handed over a pigskin bag. These troops in reserve were soldiers only in name and from the fact that they were in uniform. They were not intended to be used in the attack, and they sprawled along this line under the crest of the ridge, huddled in groups, eating, drinking and talking, or simply sitting dumbly, waiting. The attack was being made by an International Brigade.

We both drank. The water tasted of asphalt and pig bristles.
“Wine is better,” the soldier said. “I will get wine.”
“Yes. But for the thirst, water.”

“There is no thirst like the thirst of battle. Even here, in reserve, I have much thirst.”
“That is fear,” said another soldier. “Thirst is fear.”

“No,” said another. “With fear there is thirst, always. But in battle there is much thirst even when there is no fear.”
“There is always fear in battle,” said the first soldier.

“For you,” said the second soldier.
“It is normal,” the first soldier said.
“For you.”
“Shut your dirty mouth,” said the first soldier. “I am simply a man who tells the truth.”

It was a bright April day and the wind was blowing wildly so that each mule that came up the gap raised a cloud of dust, and the two men at the ends of a stretcher each raised a cloud of dust that blew together and made one, and below, across the flat, long streams of dust moved out from the ambulances and blew away in the wind.

I felt quite sure I was not going to be killed on that day now, since we had done our work well in the morning, and twice during the early part of the attack we should have been killed and were not; and this had given me confidence. The first time had been when we had gone up with the tanks and picked a place from which to film the attack.

Later I had a sudden distrust for the place and we had moved the cameras about two hundred yards to the left. Just before leaving, I had marked the place in quite the oldest way there is of marking a place, and within ten minutes a six-inch shell had lit on the exact place where I had been and there was no trace of any human being ever having been there. Instead, there was a large and clearly blasted hole in the earth.

Then, two hours later, a Polish officer, recently detached from the batalion and attached to the staff, had offered to show us the positions the Poles had just captured and, coming from under the lee of a fold of hill, we had walked into machine-gun fire that we had to crawl out from under with our chins tight to the ground and dust in our noses, and at the same time made the sad discovery that the Poles had captured no positions at all that day but were a little further back than the place they had started from. And now, lying in the shelter of the trench, I was wet with sweat, hungry and thirsty and hollow inside from the now-finished danger of the attack.

“You are sure you are not Russians?” asked a soldier. “There are Russians here today.”
“Yes. But we are not Russians.”
“You have the face of a Russian.”

“No,” I said. “You are wrong, comrade. I have quite a funny face but it is not the face of a Russian.”
“He has the face of a Russian,” pointing at the other one of us who was working on a camera.
“Perhaps. But still he is not Russian. Where you from?”

“Extremadura,” he said proudly.
“Are there any Russians in Extremadura?” I asked.
“No,” he told me, even more proudly. “There are no Russians in Extremadura, and there are no Extremadurans in Russia.”
“What are your politics?”

“I hate all foreigners,” he said.
“That’s a broad political program.”
“I hate the Moors, the English, the French, the Italians, the Germans, the North Americans and the Russians.”
“You hate them in that order?”
“Yes. But perhaps I hate the Russians the most.”

“Man, you have very interesting ideas,” I said. “Are you a fascist?”
“No. I am an Extremaduran and I hate foreigners.”

“He has very rare ideas,” said another soldier. “Do not give him too much importance. Me, I like foreigners. I am from Valencia. Take another cup of wine, please.”
I reached up and took the cup, the other wine still brassy in my mouth. I looked at the Extremaduran. He was tall and thin. His face was haggard and unshaven, and his cheeks were sunken. He stood straight up in his rage, his blanket cape around his shoulders.

“Keep your head down,” I told him. “There are many lost bullets coming over.”
“I have no fear of bullets and I hate all foreigners,” he said fiercely.
“You don’t have to fear bullets,” I said, “but you should avoid them when you are in reserve. It is not intelligent to be wounded when it can be avoided.”
“I am not afraid of anything,” the Extremaduran said.
“You are very lucky, comrade.”

“It’s true,” the other, with the wine cup, said. “He has no fear, not even of the aviones.”
“He is crazy,” another soldier said. “Everyone fears planes. They kill little but make much fear.”
“I have no fear. Neither of planes nor of nothing,” the Extremaduran said. “And I hate every foreigner alive.”

Down the gap, walking beside two stretcher-bearers and seeming to pay no attention at all to where he was, came a tall man in International Brigade uniform with a blanket rolled over his shoulder and tied at his waist. His head was held high and he looked like a man walking in his sleep. He was middle-aged. He was not carrying a rifle and, from where I lay, he did not look wounded.

I watched him walking alone down out of the war. Before he came to the staff cars he turned to the left and his head still held high in that strange way, he walked over the edge of the ridge and out of sight.

The one who was with me, busy changing film in the hand cameras, had not noticed him.
A single shell came in over the ridge and fountained in the dirt and black smoke just short of the tank reserve.

Someone put his head out of the cave where brigade headquarters was and then disappeared inside. I thought it looked like a good place to go, but knew they would all be furious in there because the attack was a failure, and I did not want to face them. If an operation was successful they were happy to have motion pictures of it. But if it was a failure everyone was in such a rage there was always a chance of being sent back under arrest.

“They may shell us now,” I said.
“That makes no difference to me,” said the Extremaduran. I was beginning to be a little tired of the Extremaduran.
“Have you