with gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one was
the center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners carrying shot and
shell.

And now Lieutenant Kadar saw it very distinctly: all the men had records
on their necks like young Meltzar. Not a single one carried his own
head. But when the shells burst with a howl from the lacquered horns and
flew straight into an ant-hill, then the flat, black discs broke apart
and at the very same instant changed back into real heads. From his
height Lieutenant Kadar saw the brains gush out of the shattered discs
and the evenly-marked surfaces turn on the second into ashen, agonized
human countenances.

Everything seemed to be revealed now in one stroke to the dying
lieutenant--all the secrets of the war, all the problems he had brooded
over for many months past. So he had the key to the riddle. These people
evidently did not get their heads back until they were about to die.
Somewhere--somewhere--far back--far back of the lines, their heads had
been unscrewed and replaced by records that could do nothing but play
the Rakoczy March. Prepared in this fashion, they had been jammed into
the trains and sent to the front, like poor Meltzar, like himself, like
all of them.

In a fury of anger, the ball of cotton tossed itself up again with a
jerk. Lieutenant Kadar wanted to jump out of bed and reveal the secret
to his men, and urge them to insist upon having their heads back again.
He wanted to whisper the secret to each individual along the entire
front, from Plava all the way down to the sea. He wanted to tell it to
each gunner, each soldier in the infantry and even to the Italians over
there! He even wanted to tell it to the Italians. The Italians, too, had