The endless historical battlefield that began with World War I

At 2 p.m., all the squad leaders and key personnel of the company gathered in a widened trench. There were about thirty people, some sitting, some squatting, and some leaning against each other. There was never any sense of ceremony in the gatherings in the trenches. Everyone just gathered together like that.

Alfred stood in the corner, his back against the trench wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

Joseph recalled the last time he saw him, when he pulled the badly injured Alfred out from under the overturned carriage. Alfred's expression at the time was like that of a cat that had fallen into a ditch—noble, disheveled, unsure whether to be angry or grateful.

Now he stands here, his uniform neat, his cap on, his lieutenant's badge gleaming, making him stand out from the other dirty soldiers.

Joseph drew a simple map on the muddy ground at the bottom of the trench with a stick.

"In night operations, the biggest enemy isn't the Germans," he said, "it's your own ears."

Someone chuckled, but he didn't stop.

"Have you ever been woken up by the slightest noise while you're sleeping at night? Yes. After being in the trenches for a long time, your ears become very sensitive, which is a good thing, but in the no man's land, it's a problem—because every sound you make is amplified in your ears. When you're crawling forward, every time your knees land, it sounds to you like stepping on a pile of dead leaves."

"So the first thing is to use noise reduction equipment. All metal parts are bound with strips of cloth. This is not only to prevent others from hearing you, but more importantly, to help you relax. Because if you can't hear the sounds you make, you won't move distorted due to tension."

Some people started taking notes in their notebooks.

Joseph continued.

He talked about sign language communication and about blackening one's face at night to reduce glare.

What he didn't say was that this methodology came from a 21st-century special operations training manual, from something he had read in another era that simply didn't exist in this one.

The methods that soldiers wrote down in 1914 would be summarized again thirty years later in a document called the "Commando Training Regulations," which would become the basic teaching material for special operations in World War II.

But that was thirty years from now. Now, these methods belong to Sergeant Joseph Lyndon, to this trench, and to these thirty people squatting in the mud this afternoon, listening attentively.

***************

After the meeting ended, most people started discussing in small groups. Just as Joseph was about to leave, a voice came from behind him.

"Sergeant Lyndon."

He turned around.

Alfred walked over and stopped two steps in front of him. His lieutenant's badge gleamed, and his chin was slightly raised—a posture Joseph had seen far too many times—at the entrance to the manor dining room, in the corridors, and when he needed to give orders to the servants.

He didn't give any instructions; he just stood there, pursing his lips, as if he was thinking about how to start the conversation.

"What you just said," Alfred said, "wasn't taught at the military academy."

"Military academies teach how to advance positions," Joseph said. "That's another matter."

Alfred glanced at him. "Where did you learn that?"

"I came up with it myself."

Alfred's lips twitched upwards, but he quickly suppressed it and didn't laugh.

Joseph knew what it was—the words "a manservant came up with" were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back.

"You're quite capable," Alfred finally said, pausing as if unaccustomed to speaking like that, "Sergeant Lyndon."

Joseph glanced at him.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Joseph said, his tone flat. "Do you have a problem?"

"That German soldier you subdued last night," Alfred said, "could have just killed him. Why didn't you?"

"Because it's unnecessary," Joseph said. "His death would not do us any extra benefit, nor would his life cause us any loss."

"He's the enemy," Alfred said, his tone carrying the self-evident truth he'd been taught since childhood—an enemy is an enemy, and there's nothing to discuss about it.

Joseph glanced at him but didn't answer immediately. He was thinking about whether the question was worth answering and how to answer it.

"Because he's twenty," Joseph finally said, "there's probably someone at home waiting for him to come back."

Alfred remained silent. This answer was clearly outside his military academy's knowledge base.

***************

Two days later, while Joseph was repairing the trenches, Alfred arrived.

He stood at the edge of the trench, looked down for a while, then jumped in, sat down on the steps next to him, and watched as Joseph directed McDonald and his men to reinforce the top of the trench.

Tom was digging in the dirt nearby. After a while, he whispered to Joseph, "He's been staring at you. Is there a problem?"

"No," Joseph said, "keep digging."

Tom glanced in Alfred's direction, then lowered his head and continued digging, but his expression suggested he wanted to say something, yet held back.

After assigning the tasks, Joseph walked over, sat down next to Alfred, and said, "Lieutenant, just ask whatever you want to ask."

Alfred glanced at him, trying to adopt an officer's posture, but sitting on a muddy trench, he froze before he could even get into the stance. His expression froze for a moment before he finally spoke: "Linden, why do you care about them so much?"

His eyes swept towards Tom and McDonald.

"They are my men," Joseph said.

“They are soldiers, your subordinates,” Alfred said. “At military school, we learn how to use them, not how to…become brothers with them.”

The last four words carried a certain meaning—not exactly mockery, but not exactly friendliness either; it was a lingering sense of class consciousness that wasn't fully controlled.

"Because they are human beings, lieutenants, not pawns," Joseph said. "Pawns can be replaced when they're used up, but each of them only has one life, and once it's used up, that's it."

Alfred remained silent for a moment.

"That's not what military academies teach," he said, his tone carrying a hint of uncertainty for the first time. "Military academies teach us that emotions can cloud our judgment."

“Yes,” Joseph said, “but indifference can too. A soldier you don’t care about, who doesn’t trust you and won’t entrust his back to you in a critical moment, is also a misjudgment.” He stood up and glanced at Tom. “Tom came with me into no man’s land a few days ago. He was scared, but he didn’t utter a sound because he trusted me. Not because he was well-trained, but because he believed I wouldn’t let him die there.”

Alfred followed his gaze to Tom. Tom was digging in the dirt, very intently, with his back to them, completely unaware that he was being discussed.

"Military academies teach tactics," Joseph concluded, "but the battlefield teaches humanity."

After Joseph finished speaking, he stood up and walked away to discuss the angle of the next section of the trench roof with McDonald.

Alfred sat there.

Tom was still digging, his back to him. McDonald was measuring planks, a nail between his teeth, head down, oblivious to everything around him.

Alfred spent several years at military school learning how to command soldiers.

But as he listened to Joseph speak, to him say "they are my men," to him say that Tom had turned his back on him, he suddenly realized something—

No soldier was ever willing to entrust their back to him.

He never thought it was something that needed to be won.

He sat in the muddy trench, watching the former male servant walk away with his back to him, and for the first time, a thought occurred to him—

He seemed to be missing something, and that was something Lyndon had.