The Wolf Truce: Wolves, Witches and the Wilkołak of World War I

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They say the truth always comes to light, but

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they're wrong. Some truths are buried and some

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are hidden. And some are so dark that people

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spend their entire lives making sure they're

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never found. Darkness hands a voice, and if you

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listen long enough, you'll hear a whisper. And

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I am the Whisper Man. Tonight we listen. This

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is Whispers from the Dark. A soldier learns the

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sounds of his war. It takes a few weeks and after

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that he never has to think about it again. The

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long whistle of a shell that will never land

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somewhere else and then the short one that won't.

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The flat crack of a rifle. The stunner of a machine

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gun which from a distance sounds almost like

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someone trying to type a letter. By his second

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window a man can sleep through a barrage of battery.

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He can eat his bread beside a body and finish

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the bread. He learns the smells as well. Cordite

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and sour at the back of the throat and wet wool.

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The smells of latrine and lamp oil. And after

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a barrage, the smell that never washes out of

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a uniform no matter how hard it's scrubbed. and

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blood and copper and warm and under the blood

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the burnt hair and the burnt skin the sweet crazy

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smell of a man who was standing too close to

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the shell he he learns the screams the the high

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ones from men who've been hit and just don't

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understand how badly The low ones from men who

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do and the ones that go on all night from somewhere

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out in the wire a little weaker every hour till

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the silence afterwards is the loudest thing he's

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ever heard and eventually Eventually he turned

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it all Or he thinks he has In the winter of 1916,

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along the frozen line where the German and Russian

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armies faced each other across Poland and Lithuania,

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the soldiers began hearing a sound. The sound

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that war hadn't taught them yet. You see, it

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came from the trees. It came from after the guns

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went quiet. And it came from the throat at once,

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high and rising, then breaking apart into separate

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voices that seemed to come from everywhere along

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the tree line, left and right and behind, so

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that a man on a firing couldn't step up and tell

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whether he was hearing six animals or sixty.

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The newspapers, they just sent us the wolves.

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The soldiers, they called them wolves too most

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of the time. A few of the men who survived that

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winter told stories the newspapers never printed.

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Wolves bigger than they'd ever seen. Wolves that

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stood at the edge of the trees and watched the

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trenches for hours. and rolls it for a few seconds

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and the moonlight rolls up in the snow and stood

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up like a man. The villagers who lived in those

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forests had a word for that. They'd had it for

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centuries. The Vilkaak. Tonight, don't we talk

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about the way the world's biggest superpowers

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at the time agreed to attack. A temporary truce.

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A truce between Germany and Russia to go hunt

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something that was hunting them. I mean, Jeremy

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Henson. They call me the Whisper Man, and this

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is Whispers from the Dark. the feeding ground.

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The eastern front was a different sort of war

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from the one that most people have a picture

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in their mind. In France, the armies dogged in

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and stayed, and in the east the line ran for

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hundreds of miles through marsh and birch and

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forest and farm country, through villages whose

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names changed depending on which army helped

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them that month. Millions, I mean millions of

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men moved across that ground and behind them

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came horses by the hundred thousand and supply

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wagons and herds of requisitioned cattle. And

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behind all of that came the dead. Men who fell

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between the lines stayed between the lines and

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horses killed by shell fire. They just lay where

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they dropped. And in their cold they camped for

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weeks. Farms. Farms were abandoned with the animals

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that still lived in the barns and whole districts

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empties as families flat -eyed on the fighting.

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The shell lands in a farmyard and the barn goes

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up with the horses and still tied inside. And

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for a few minutes the whole village can hear

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them and then for days the whole valley can smell

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them. Scorched and burning straw and cooked meat.

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Villages burned for a week at a time and field

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hospitals ran off bandages. Then they ran out

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of morphine and men lay on the straw in the cold

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with their burns open to the air, screaming when

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everyone would touch them or move them on the

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stretcher. All they can smell blood from a very

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long way off. In that winter, the whole front

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reeked of it. And the winter was hard. So hard

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snow will lay deep under the birches from November

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on. And for generations, generations, the wolves

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in those forests had to learn to stay away from

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people. People had rifles and traps and dogs

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and people, they meant danger. And then, in the

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space of a single year, The men arrived by the

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hundreds of thousands and they brought meat.

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Enormous amounts of meat left lying in the open.

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Renewed, new meat every time the guns fired and

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the wolves caring about one thing and that one

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thing was food. And in 1916, the eastern front

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was the Biggest feeding ground around those forests

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that they had ever seen. You see, a pup whelped

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that spring in a den a half a mile behind the

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lines. They hear artillery before it even hears

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the mother's call. It's first winter. It smells

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cordite and dead horses, and it learns what every

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young wolf from the pack, which is where the

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food is. Where the food is was where the noise

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was. Every barrage is a dinner bell to the wild.

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Every bell leaves the table set. By the time

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that pup has grown, the guns have taught it where

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to find dinner. And, well, when the shelling

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starts, they come. The first screen. Newspapers

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had, at the time, began reporting the problem.

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Wolves. Lots of wolves in growing packs moving

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closer to the positions. Wolves among the livestock

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and wolves in the villages and then wolves attacking

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the wounded. A German trench somewhere east of

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Konovo in January. The cold damn month is the

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kind that splits the bark on trees. The afternoon

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the Russians gunned thrown the next section of

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the trench down the line. The men here, mmm,

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they listened to what happened. The shells first,

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then the screaming, then a dug -out caught fire

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and the screaming changed and went higher and

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the smell came down the trench on the wind that

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nobody mentioned and nobody forgot. Mmm, scorched.

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scorched wool and blood and burnt skin. Until

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dark, the stretcher -bearers carried men back

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past this position. Some of them had no faces

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left to speak of. Some of them were begging to

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be shot. The patrol went out at night and four

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men when all three of them came back. The fourth

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still out turned the dark with a bullet in his

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hip and the whole trench can hear him. He's calling

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for his mother, and the sergeant has decided

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no one goes out until first light, because the

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Russians won't be watching the ground where he

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fell. So the trench, the trench listens. Then,

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beyond the wire, a wolf gives one short call,

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clipped. More question than howl. Another answer

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from the left, another deeper in the trees, the

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wounded man. He hears them too. His voice, his

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voice starts to climb. He starts to crawl. Everyone

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can hear that as well. The scrape of his belt

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buckle on the frozen mud and the sound of a man

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trying to hurry. Then he stops hurrying. Three

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men go over to parapet after him. Brave men.

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When they reach him, there are already animals

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on him, and for a few seconds there's a tug of

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war over the body of a living human being. Three

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soldiers, hauling his arms and his collar, something

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in the dark hauling on his legs. His sleeve tears.

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His hand slides out of theirs, and he glows.

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He goes backwards into the forest, into the black,

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dark cold. Nobody in the trench sees what happens

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next. They didn't see it, but they heard it.

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All of it. The first shriek when the teeth closed,

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and the wet sounds. A man's voice seemed one

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word over another over another, a name, maybe

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a prayer until it wasn't a word anymore. snarling

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and snapping when the two animals disagreed about

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something and then the bone and afterward, when

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it had gone quiet out there, somebody still had

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to take the next lunch. Hmm, the Wolf Truce.

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What happened next was printed in newspapers

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while the war was still being fought. German

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and Russian scouts, the report said, were exchanging

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fire in a forest when wolves came in among them

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and went for the wounded. The shooting began

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when the two sides stopped. The rifle swung round.

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Around 50 wolves reported to be killed. The scouts

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went back to their own lines and resumed the

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war precisely where they'd left it. The wolves

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kept coming. By early 1917, the reports described

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the country around Kovdom, Vilna and Minsk as

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overrun. The armies tried poison, they tried

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rifles, they used grenades, and the grenades

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failed, but then they brought up machine guns.

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Machine guns against wolves. Kill one pack and

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the next pack were on the same fields, full of

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the same food. So... According to those wartime

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reports, the two armies did something their government

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had refused to do for them for two and a half

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years. They agreed to stop. Local troops negotiated

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across a wonder by men who spent the winter trying

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to shell each other into the ground for its duration.

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German and Russian soldiers hunting together.

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Hmm. Grey coats and brown coats. Walking into

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the snow side by side, rifles pointed the same

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direction for the first time since 1914. Men,

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men who couldn't say good morning in each other's

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language, beating through the woods in one long

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line. driving the packs and driving them towards

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their guns somewhere somewhere in the line quite

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possibly a man who a week earlier had put a bullet

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into the man now walking beside him neither neither

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would ever know they might share a singer at

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dusk and in the morning The machine guns would

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start again. Several hundred wolves were reported

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killed, the last scanner deeper and deeper into

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the forest. And then, the truth ended. And they

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went back to killing each other. What the record

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actually holds. The newspaper from that winter

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report and wolves and packs of wolves on the

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eastern front had stopped fearing men. They report

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attacks on the wounded. They report the scout

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fight and the poison and the grenades and the

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machine guns and a truce between two enemies

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willing to kill each other to the last one. They

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were hunting. They were hunting the wolves down.

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They report nothing bigger than a wolf. Nothing

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standing on two legs. I couldn't find a single

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medical record recording tying a case of shell

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shock to a wolf attack, even though that war

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was breaking by men by the thousands. And the

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rest of this story, the rest of it comes from

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the soldiers themselves. But they remembered

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decades later when the details had grown with

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every telling. And it comes, it comes from the

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folklore of the people who lived in those forests

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long before the armies ever arrived. The ones

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that stood. The stories of the soldiers told

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later described things, the newspapers, and they

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never did. Some wolves were described as far

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bigger than anything men had ever seen. The size

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of ponies and the size of big calves. Some were

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said to stand at the tree line in broad daylight

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and stare at the trench without moving. And they

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did it. They did it on both sides of the line.

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German and Russian, there are stories of wolves

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rising onto their hind legs and standing and

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walking and holding their watching the men. A

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century on a night like that has almost nothing

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to see, but the flair has died. There was a quarter

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moon, smoke drifting in from somewhere, and snow

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blowing sideways off the drifts. He slept maybe

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nine hours and four days, and an old woman in

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the last village told him that not every word

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of these wolves in these woods was true. Not

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every wolf was born a wolf. Something moves at

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the end of the trees and arises. He sees it for

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three seconds, perhaps four. He will describe

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it for the rest of his life to his sergeant the

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next morning who tells him to stop talking. To

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his wife once in 1921 who just never asks again.

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to a grandson 40 years later who writes it down

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and gets two of the details wrong. You see, wolves

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do stand on their hind legs sometimes to see

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over a brush or to fight and so do bears. Bad

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point, the shadow of a tree can look like either

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one and a man who hasn't slept in four days will

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see things that weren't there before. Or... He

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saw exactly what he said he saw because the old

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woman in that village was Repeating a story that

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her people had been telling for hundreds of years

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The wedding The silver bullet in the bite mostly

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came out of Hollywood A big lock. Well, it's

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much, much older than that, and it doesn't need

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a full moon. For most of its history, a great

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many people believed that it was just real. It's

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like breathing air. 2 ,500 years ago, the Greek

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historian Herodotus wrote about it to the people

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called the Nori, whose men were said to turn

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to wolves for a few days a year. In France in

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1573, a man named Gilles Gagné was sentenced

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to burn alive after a court found he had killed

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children in the shape of a wolf. In Germany,

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1589, a farmer named Peter Stump was tortured

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in public and beheaded and burned as a werewolf.

00:20:52.420 --> 00:20:59.700
A crowd watched. In Livonia in 1692, an old man,

00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:03.769
Thenus, told his judges calmly that he was a

00:21:03.769 --> 00:21:07.609
werewolf. He said he and others went down to

00:21:07.609 --> 00:21:11.269
the hell at night to fight the witches and bring

00:21:11.269 --> 00:21:16.630
back the harvest. The courts heard the evidence

00:21:16.630 --> 00:21:20.549
and people were tried and some were put to death.

00:21:23.309 --> 00:21:26.089
The German soldiers who laughed at the old man

00:21:26.089 --> 00:21:29.049
in the village. came from a country that had

00:21:29.049 --> 00:21:32.509
once burned men for doing what they described.

00:21:34.289 --> 00:21:37.690
In Poland and the lands around it, a person could

00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:40.670
become one through sorcery as a punishment and

00:21:40.670 --> 00:21:44.210
through a curse laid by someone else. Some did

00:21:44.210 --> 00:21:47.809
it, some did it on purpose. With a belt of wolf

00:21:47.809 --> 00:21:51.130
skin and the right words, some of them had dumbed

00:21:51.130 --> 00:21:54.849
them. One of the oldest stories is about a wedding,

00:21:55.650 --> 00:22:00.069
a village one late summer. Long tables under

00:22:00.069 --> 00:22:04.990
the trees and bread and sausage and plum brandy.

00:22:05.930 --> 00:22:08.690
A fiddle of an accordion going, the bride's mother

00:22:08.690 --> 00:22:12.930
crying happily into her sleeve. Everyone, everyone

00:22:12.930 --> 00:22:21.400
came. Almost everyone. See, there's a woman who

00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:24.220
lives at the end of the road near the forest.

00:22:25.039 --> 00:22:27.779
She knows which groups bring a fever town and

00:22:27.779 --> 00:22:30.680
which ones bring fever home, and the village

00:22:30.680 --> 00:22:34.920
calls her when a cow won't calf. Yeah, village.

00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:38.460
The village does not call her to the weddings.

00:22:40.099 --> 00:22:42.720
And some tell me she comes anyways, and others

00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:45.960
she never shows her face. She simply lays a belt

00:22:45.960 --> 00:22:49.700
on her in a braided cord or... Something will

00:22:49.700 --> 00:22:52.200
cross the path of the wedding party that will

00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:58.559
take the walk on home. She chants or says something

00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:04.019
over just really quietly. And the walk home is

00:23:04.019 --> 00:23:08.079
at dusk. Lanterns swinging. And the girl's a

00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:10.599
little drunk and the musician's still playing

00:23:10.599 --> 00:23:15.000
as they go. Somebody's uncle singing the wrong

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:20.559
words to a song that everybody knows. The road,

00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:24.160
the road bends towards the trees and the bride

00:23:24.160 --> 00:23:27.940
steps across the groom, the best man, the musicians,

00:23:28.220 --> 00:23:32.359
and the bride's two brothers. And on the far

00:23:32.359 --> 00:23:37.180
side of that cord, the wedding party goes down

00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:42.200
onto four lakes. Hmm, wolves. A whole pack of

00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:44.619
them, a whole pack of them in the road. Some

00:23:44.619 --> 00:23:47.279
still wearing a scrap of an embroidered sleeve

00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:51.980
or a ribbon from the bride's hair. In several

00:23:51.980 --> 00:23:54.700
of the old versions, the one thing that never

00:23:54.700 --> 00:24:00.420
changed was the eyes. A year later, a mother

00:24:00.420 --> 00:24:03.940
sees a wolf at the edge of her field and doesn't

00:24:03.940 --> 00:24:07.359
run. She looks at it for a long time and she

00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:13.759
knows it. She knows those eyes. You see, that's

00:24:13.759 --> 00:24:19.079
her son. In the old stories, the Vylklok was

00:24:19.079 --> 00:24:22.160
often a person trapped inside the body of a wolf.

00:24:22.740 --> 00:24:25.640
Sometimes a person who had gone in willingly.

00:24:26.599 --> 00:24:35.240
Sometimes they went in on purpose. The villagers.

00:24:36.259 --> 00:24:39.599
Now, none of that land was German and none was

00:24:39.599 --> 00:24:42.180
Russian either. The people in those villages

00:24:42.180 --> 00:24:46.599
were Poles and Lithuanians and Belarusians. Their

00:24:46.599 --> 00:24:49.240
family had farmed those fields for hundreds of

00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:52.359
years and Russia had ruled them for a century.

00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:57.640
In 1915 the Germans drove the Russians out and

00:24:57.640 --> 00:25:01.019
took over and either way the soldiers were strangers.

00:25:02.339 --> 00:25:04.940
Both armies took whatever they wanted in grain.

00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:09.500
horses, and young men for labor gangs, and when

00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:13.019
the Russians retreated in 1915, they burned much

00:25:13.019 --> 00:25:15.500
of what they couldn't carry, and families stood

00:25:15.500 --> 00:25:17.980
in the road and watched their homes go up in

00:25:17.980 --> 00:25:23.319
flames. So when the soldiers came asking about

00:25:23.319 --> 00:25:27.980
the wolves, the villagers had their own reasons

00:25:27.980 --> 00:25:32.740
for the answers they gave. A German column holds

00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:35.980
some villages east of Vilna. A Russian patrol

00:25:35.980 --> 00:25:39.059
shelters overnight in a farmhouse outside Minsk.

00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:42.420
The soldiers are clerks from Berlin and factory

00:25:42.420 --> 00:25:46.519
hens from Moscow. Farm boys from Bavaria and

00:25:46.519 --> 00:25:51.660
Volga. They ask the locals about the wolves because

00:25:51.660 --> 00:25:56.509
everyone was talking about the wolves. An old

00:25:56.509 --> 00:26:00.349
man very politely informs them that some of those

00:26:00.349 --> 00:26:04.569
wolves aren't wolves, they're people. The soldiers,

00:26:04.569 --> 00:26:10.009
they laugh. A woman at the well warns them against

00:26:10.009 --> 00:26:13.569
falling a hole into the trees at night. Some

00:26:13.569 --> 00:26:18.809
howl, she says, are for calling. And they laugh

00:26:18.809 --> 00:26:25.430
at that, too. They're people. The old man adds

00:26:25.430 --> 00:26:30.730
that, you know, I'm a Calvin, and people only

00:26:30.730 --> 00:26:34.569
know how to answer. He says it like it's nothing.

00:26:35.670 --> 00:26:38.170
The soldiers were hearing how it was done in

00:26:38.170 --> 00:26:41.309
one version or another, and one man drives a

00:26:41.309 --> 00:26:43.390
knife into an old tree stump at the edge of a

00:26:43.390 --> 00:26:46.630
forest. He walks around the stump and says the

00:26:46.630 --> 00:26:50.230
words, then throws himself over the bride and

00:26:50.230 --> 00:26:55.569
lands on the other side heads. Four legs. In

00:26:55.569 --> 00:26:58.569
another, a woman goes to the treeline after dark

00:26:58.569 --> 00:27:04.950
and speaks into the forest. The same few lines

00:27:04.950 --> 00:27:08.910
her grandmother taught her. Then she waits for

00:27:08.910 --> 00:27:12.410
the howling just to sit there and answer. Those

00:27:12.410 --> 00:27:17.190
words, those words were real. Folklore in Russia

00:27:17.190 --> 00:27:19.170
had written some of them down in the century

00:27:19.170 --> 00:27:23.000
before the war. Charms for turning a man into

00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:25.779
a wolf, and charms for keeping wolves away from

00:27:25.779 --> 00:27:30.359
the herds and along the front. A rumor moved

00:27:30.359 --> 00:27:35.579
and filled the trench. And it went trench to

00:27:35.579 --> 00:27:40.279
trench. The villagers, they were calling them.

00:27:40.779 --> 00:27:43.920
The people who had lost their grain and their

00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:47.480
houses and their homes to Foreign armies were

00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:50.759
standing at the edge of the forest at night seeing

00:27:50.759 --> 00:27:55.299
seeing the old words I'm sending the wolves down

00:27:55.299 --> 00:27:59.000
on the men who had taken everything from them

00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:06.700
No No record grooves anyone ever did it But the

00:28:06.700 --> 00:28:10.890
soldiers the soldiers believed it anyway Two

00:28:10.890 --> 00:28:14.769
nights later a sentry fails to answer the relief.

00:28:15.970 --> 00:28:19.529
In the morning they find the rifles and a cap

00:28:19.529 --> 00:28:23.190
and a long smear in the snow leading toward the

00:28:23.190 --> 00:28:28.390
forest. The tracks alongside it are large and

00:28:28.390 --> 00:28:31.490
nobody laughs. Nobody laughs that day at breakfast.

00:28:33.430 --> 00:28:37.400
A story like that spreads fast in an army. By

00:28:37.400 --> 00:28:39.359
the end of the week, the whole regiment knows

00:28:39.359 --> 00:28:44.960
of the word. Wilkulak. Tonight, I'm calling what

00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:49.160
those rumors turned into by another name. The

00:28:49.160 --> 00:28:53.240
bukulak turned into the wolfkin. The bukulak

00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:55.640
is the village word. The wolfkin is what the

00:28:55.640 --> 00:28:58.500
trenches made of it. The old curse laid over

00:28:58.500 --> 00:29:07.089
their own dead. The pattern. There is a rational

00:29:07.089 --> 00:29:11.589
explanation for much of what happened, and it's

00:29:11.589 --> 00:29:16.809
been enough on its own. A wolf that hears gunfire

00:29:16.809 --> 00:29:20.250
over and over and over never gets hurt and stops

00:29:20.250 --> 00:29:25.589
being afraid of it. A wolf that hears the gunfire

00:29:25.589 --> 00:29:29.150
and then finds food, they start moving toward

00:29:29.150 --> 00:29:34.039
it. The wolves on the eastern front had two full

00:29:34.039 --> 00:29:39.680
years to learn that. Blood and the blood was

00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:43.839
on a scale that no European force had seen in

00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:47.700
least living memory. Hunting and trapping abandoned

00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:52.099
because the hunters had all been conscripted.

00:29:53.779 --> 00:29:56.460
Wounded men alone and bleeding in the open after

00:29:56.460 --> 00:30:02.119
dark. The wolf that lost its fear of men and

00:30:02.119 --> 00:30:05.980
learned that wounded men can't run, it's gonna

00:30:05.980 --> 00:30:11.180
come for them. And then there are the men, the

00:30:11.180 --> 00:30:15.440
men themselves. Then war invented a new kind

00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:19.160
of casualty, and the doctors, the doctors called

00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:22.400
it shell shock, and men who shook, just shook

00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:27.539
and could not stop. Men who could never speak

00:30:27.539 --> 00:30:31.160
again and went mute or blind or could not walk

00:30:31.160 --> 00:30:37.680
And had no wound anywhere on them Men men who

00:30:37.680 --> 00:30:40.519
screamed in their sleep and then awake and sat

00:30:40.519 --> 00:30:46.460
and staring staring at a wall for days and those

00:30:46.460 --> 00:30:51.299
men Those were the witnesses. Men who dragged

00:30:51.299 --> 00:30:53.799
a friend out of a burning dugout and could still

00:30:53.799 --> 00:30:58.259
smell him on their own hands a month later. Artillery

00:30:58.259 --> 00:31:02.140
is impersonal. It's fired from miles away by

00:31:02.140 --> 00:31:07.140
someone who will never ever see your face. Bullet.

00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:14.339
Bullet is nearly the same. Teeth. Teeth are something

00:31:14.339 --> 00:31:20.430
else. Teeth means something picked you something's

00:31:20.430 --> 00:31:25.210
teeth was hold of you and That's how it started

00:31:25.210 --> 00:31:30.230
The man Man who heard that happen to his friend

00:31:30.230 --> 00:31:33.130
in the dark carried that sound home with him

00:31:33.130 --> 00:31:38.529
for the rest of his life with no surprises the

00:31:38.529 --> 00:31:42.789
wolves The wolves in his memory kept getting

00:31:42.789 --> 00:31:51.650
bigger and bigger forever. You see, there was

00:31:51.650 --> 00:31:56.750
the other monster. Maybe the werewolf was never

00:31:56.750 --> 00:32:01.089
worried about wolves at all. Maybe it was about

00:32:01.089 --> 00:32:06.549
us. The men in the snow were clerks and bakers

00:32:06.549 --> 00:32:10.779
and schoolteachers and farmer's sons. Ordinary

00:32:10.779 --> 00:32:15.720
men put in uniforms and sent into the forest

00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:21.180
to kill strangers in a different uniform. They

00:32:21.180 --> 00:32:23.619
crawled through the mud that had the people in

00:32:23.619 --> 00:32:27.339
it. They used bayonets on the men they could

00:32:27.339 --> 00:32:30.960
hear breathing, and they breathed the smoke of

00:32:30.960 --> 00:32:33.339
burning villages until they stopped noticing

00:32:33.339 --> 00:32:41.130
it. Near Palomar, 1915. The German camps rolled

00:32:41.130 --> 00:32:44.490
over the Russian lines and men drowned on dry

00:32:44.490 --> 00:32:47.970
ground coughing up the lining of their own lungs

00:32:47.970 --> 00:32:55.849
and Then they had their coffee If the later stories

00:32:55.849 --> 00:32:58.309
are even close the wolves of that front killed

00:32:58.309 --> 00:33:04.869
men by the dozens perhaps by the hundreds The

00:33:04.869 --> 00:33:07.869
men on that front killed each other by the million

00:33:09.299 --> 00:33:15.319
So, who was the real monster out there? A wolf

00:33:15.319 --> 00:33:19.319
that learned to hunt men? A man who learned to

00:33:19.319 --> 00:33:24.099
hunt men. That's what the old village stories

00:33:24.099 --> 00:33:27.480
were about all along. A man crosses a line and

00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:33.000
comes back as something else. The soldiers, they

00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:35.579
didn't have to look past their own trench. They

00:33:35.579 --> 00:33:43.000
could see it happen. So... Which one? Which one

00:33:43.000 --> 00:33:46.720
was the millock? The wolf that lost its fear

00:33:46.720 --> 00:33:56.279
of man? Was it the beast or was it the man? Hmm,

00:33:56.599 --> 00:34:01.619
a whisper. In the end, the Hunts Valley kinda

00:34:01.619 --> 00:34:05.599
seemed to work. The reports say several hundred

00:34:05.599 --> 00:34:08.719
huge wolves died, and the survivors went deep

00:34:08.719 --> 00:34:11.440
into the woods, and the crisis erased, and the

00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:16.079
truce ended, and the war and the deaths resumed.

00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:20.179
Within two years, the Russian Empire was gone,

00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:22.820
and so was the German one. The villages changed

00:34:22.820 --> 00:34:28.679
flags, and then they simply changed names. The

00:34:28.679 --> 00:34:33.389
soldiers who came home just engrossed. The ones

00:34:33.389 --> 00:34:37.210
who didn't become names on some stone somewhere,

00:34:38.030 --> 00:34:41.489
and the forest grew panic over all of it. The

00:34:41.489 --> 00:34:45.969
last story ever made into a newspaper, it comes

00:34:45.969 --> 00:34:51.550
from what the soldier said afterwards. A century.

00:34:52.670 --> 00:34:56.650
February. German, Russian. You see, it really

00:34:56.650 --> 00:34:59.230
doesn't matter anymore. His feet have stopped

00:34:59.230 --> 00:35:02.269
hurting, which is bad, but his friend was killed.

00:35:02.300 --> 00:35:06.840
Three days ago. The man, posted ten meters to

00:35:06.840 --> 00:35:10.960
his left, hasn't said anything in a while. In

00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:13.860
the forest, the forest in front of him is black

00:35:13.860 --> 00:35:17.699
and dead quiet, with no wind and no birds. Every

00:35:17.699 --> 00:35:20.119
sound he makes, the creak of his coat, the click

00:35:20.119 --> 00:35:27.920
of the bolt, seems to carry for miles. Snow compresses.

00:35:28.679 --> 00:35:33.920
One step. He brings the rifle up, nothing. Another

00:35:33.920 --> 00:35:38.420
step back, closer and softer. Low to the ground

00:35:38.420 --> 00:35:41.519
at the edge of the birches, two points of reflected

00:35:41.519 --> 00:35:49.619
light. A wolf. Only, only a wolf. He lets his

00:35:49.619 --> 00:35:53.539
breath out. Another pair of eyes opens besides

00:35:53.539 --> 00:35:56.679
the first and then another. Then four more spread

00:35:56.679 --> 00:36:02.820
along the tree. Multiple, multiple wolves line

00:36:02.820 --> 00:36:08.260
up in an even row. He fires, he fires once high,

00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:12.360
and they flinch and they stay. And behind them,

00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:16.059
between two more larger trees, something much

00:36:16.059 --> 00:36:21.420
bigger shifts its weight. Now, he can only make

00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:24.280
out the outline, heavy shoulders and a long head

00:36:24.280 --> 00:36:28.360
held very low. Then it looks at him and he has

00:36:28.360 --> 00:36:33.719
to clear the cold sense of being assessed. Then

00:36:33.719 --> 00:36:38.920
it's front half lifts. Lifts from the snow, slowly,

00:36:39.780 --> 00:36:44.239
up and up, the spine straightening and the four

00:36:44.239 --> 00:36:47.320
legs hanging loose until the thing at the edge

00:36:47.320 --> 00:36:52.280
of the forest is standing on two legs. A head

00:36:52.280 --> 00:36:55.639
taller than he is, perfectly still with the moon

00:36:55.639 --> 00:37:01.559
behind it, for about five seconds. It simply

00:37:01.559 --> 00:37:05.800
stands there, staring at him. Then it drops and

00:37:05.800 --> 00:37:08.679
it turns and the whole row of eyes goes out at

00:37:08.679 --> 00:37:12.980
once. In the morning there are tracks, wolf tracks,

00:37:13.340 --> 00:37:20.739
many, many of them. And that's all. The war fed

00:37:20.739 --> 00:37:24.380
wolves and emptied the countryside. It broke

00:37:24.380 --> 00:37:26.840
the men who saw them and the old stories filled

00:37:26.840 --> 00:37:31.119
in wherever and wherever they couldn't see. And

00:37:31.119 --> 00:37:36.760
that's, that's the comfortable answer. Somewhere,

00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:40.760
somewhere between Kovno and Minsk, two armies

00:37:40.760 --> 00:37:43.960
with machine guns and artillery and the whole

00:37:43.960 --> 00:37:46.739
industrial weight of the twentieth century behind

00:37:46.739 --> 00:37:50.010
them were frightened enough of what was coming

00:37:50.010 --> 00:37:53.949
out of those trees that they stopped the war.

00:37:55.789 --> 00:37:58.750
They stopped the war to deal with it, and the

00:37:58.750 --> 00:38:01.369
people who lived there first had already known

00:38:01.369 --> 00:38:06.010
them, and had already told them. In words the

00:38:06.010 --> 00:38:08.789
soldiers laughed at, and not everything wearing

00:38:08.789 --> 00:38:11.670
a wolf's skin had been born a wolf, none built

00:38:11.670 --> 00:38:18.519
a lock. Maybe. Maybe those stories were only

00:38:18.519 --> 00:38:24.539
ever stories. Maybe, maybe a legend is simply

00:38:24.539 --> 00:38:28.820
what's left behind after the witnesses have all

00:38:28.820 --> 00:38:34.599
gone quiet. I'm Jeremy Hansen, and they call

00:38:34.599 --> 00:38:39.760
me the Whisper Man. You've been listening to

00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:43.480
whispers from the dark if you hear something

00:38:43.480 --> 00:38:47.900
moving outside your window. Forget the hole count

00:38:47.900 --> 00:38:52.179
the footsteps Sleep with the light on