The Moment Before Everything Changes — War and Peace

Prince Andrew's regiment waits among the reserves behind Semenovsk until after one o'clock, inactive under heavy artillery fire. Toward two, having already lost more than two hundred men, it is moved into a trampled oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where several hundred enemy guns concentrate their fire. Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot, the regiment loses another third of its men. The ranks sit on the ground by order, taciturn and morose. Talk dies whenever a successful shot thuds and someone cries for stretchers. Men loosen the linings of their shakos, polish bayonets with dry clay, finger bandolier straps, plait baskets from straw, and build little houses of turf. They barely notice the killed, the retreating troops, or the enemy masses in the smoke, yet they approve when their own artillery or infantry goes forward. A trace horse with a leg over the traces draws identical shouts along the whole line. A small brown dog trots past with its tail stiff until a shell falls close by; the regiment shrieks with laughter, then the pale silence returns. For eight hours they have been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death.

Prince Andrew paces the meadow edge with head bowed and arms behind his back. There is nothing for him to do. He tries at first to rouse the men's courage, then sees that they need no lesson from him. All the powers of his soul, like theirs, turn away from the horror of their situation. He counts steps between the strips of grass, tries to keep to the mowers' footprints, strips wormwood flowers from a boundary rut, and smells their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Yesterday's thoughts are gone. He thinks of nothing. A cannon ball tears up the dry earth five paces from him. He orders the adjutant not to let the men crowd together. Then a shell drops with little noise within two steps of him, spinning like a top beside a wormwood plant. The adjutant throws himself flat. Prince Andrew looks with a quite new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke from the rotating black ball. He cannot, he does not wish to die. He loves life: this grass, this earth, this air. At the same time he remembers that people are looking at him. It is shameful to lie down, he tells the adjutant, and does not finish the sentence.

The explosion comes with a whistle of splinters and a suffocating smell of powder. He starts aside, raises his arm, and falls on his chest. Blood wells from the right side of his abdomen and stains the grass. Peasant militiamen take him by the shoulders and legs, set him down when he moans, then lay him on a stretcher. Officers say that a wound in the stomach means death. Timokhin runs up, trembling. At the dressing station by the birch wood, bloodstained men cover more than five acres. As a regimental commander Prince Andrew is carried close to a tent. He remembers the meadow, the whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. A feverish noncommissioned officer boasts that they nearly grabbed the King himself. Prince Andrew feels a sense of comfort, then wonders why he was so reluctant to part with life. There was something in this life he did not and does not understand.