Three Soldiers (12 page)

“Hum, well. … You’ll look at things differently when you have,” said the major.

The lieutenant frowned.

“Well, on the whole, lieutenant, your outfit is in very good shape. … At ease, men!” The lieutenant and the major stood at the door a moment raising the collars of their coats; then they dove out into the rain.

A few minutes later the sergeant came in.

“All right, get your slickers on and line up.”

They stood lined up in the rain for a long while. It was a leaden afternoon. The even clouds had a faint coppery tinge. The rain beat in their faces, making them tingle. Fuselli was looking anxiously at the sergeant. At last the lieutenant appeared.

“Attention!” cried the sergeant.

The roll was called and a new man fell in at the end of the line, a tall man with large protruding eyes like a calf ’s.

“Private 1st-class Daniel Fuselli, fall out and report to headquarters company!”

Fuselli saw a look of surprise come over men’s faces. He smiled wanly at Meadville.

“Sergeant, take the men down to the station.”

“Squads, right,” cried the sergeant. “March!”

The company tramped off into the streaming rain.

Fuselli went back to the barracks, took off his pack and slicker and wiped the water off his face.

The rails gleamed gold in the early morning sunshine above the deep purple cinders of the track. Fuselli’s eyes followed the track until it curved into a cutting where the wet clay was a bright orange in the clear light. The station platform, where puddles from the night’s rain glittered as the wind ruffled them, was empty. Fuselli started walking up and down with his hands in his pockets. He had been sent down to unload some supplies that were coming on that morning’s train. He felt free and successful since he joined the headquarters company. At last, he told himself, he had a job where he could show what he was good for. He walked up and down whistling shrilly.

A train pulled slowly into the station. The engine stopped to take water and the couplings clanked all down the line of cars. The platform was suddenly full of men in khaki, stamping their feet, running up and down shouting.

“Where you guys goin’?” asked Fuselli.

“We’re bound for Palm Beach. Don’t we look like it?” someone snarled in reply.

But Fuselli had seen a familiar face. He was shaking hands with two browned men whose faces were grimy with days of travelling in freight cars.

“Hullo, Chrisfield. Hullo, Andrews!” he cried. “When did you fellows get over here?”

“Oh, ’bout four months ago,” said Chrisfield, whose black eyes looked at Fuselli searchingly. “Oh! Ah ’member you. You’re Fuselli. We was at trainin’ camp together. ’Member him, Andy?”

“Sure,” said Andrews.

“How are you makin’ out?”

“Fine,” said Fuselli. “I’m in the optical department here.”

“Where the hell’s that?”

“Right here.” Fuselli pointed vaguely behind the station.

“We’ve been training about four months near Bordeaux,” said Andrews; “and now we’re going to see what it’s like.”

The whistle blew and the engine started puffing hard. Clouds of white steam filled the station platform, where the soldiers scampered for their cars.

“Good luck!” said Fuselli; but Andrews and Chrisfield had already gone. He saw them again as the train pulled out, two brown and dirt-grimed faces among many other brown and dirt-grimed faces. The steam floated up tinged with yellow in the bright early morning air as the last car of the train disappeared round the curve into the cutting.

The dust rose thickly about the worn broom. As it was a dark morning, very little light filtered into the room full of great white packing cases, where Fuselli was sweeping. He stopped now and then and leaned on his broom. Far away he heard a sound of trains shunting and shouts and the sound of feet tramping in unison from the drill ground. The building where he was was silent. He went on sweeping, thinking of his company tramping off through the streaming rain, and of those fellows he had known in training camp in America, Andrews and Chrisfield, jolting in box cars towards the front, where Daniel’s buddy had had his chest split in half by a piece of shell. And he’d written home he’d been made a corporal. What was he going to do when letters came for him, addressed Corporal Dan Fuselli? Putting the broom away, he dusted the yellow chair and the table covered with order slips that stood in the middle of the piles of packing boxes. The door slammed somewhere below and there was a step on the stairs that led to the upper part of the warehouse. A little man with a monkey-like greyish-brown face and spectacles appeared and slipped out of his overcoat, like a very small bean popping out of a very large pod.

The sergeant’s stripes looked unusually wide and conspicuous on his thin arm.

He grunted at Fuselli, sat down at the desk, and began at once peering among the order slips.

“Anything in our mailbox this morning?” he asked Fuselli in a hoarse voice.

“It’s all there, sergeant,” said Fuselli.

The sergeant peered about the desk some more.

“Ye’ll have to wash that window today,” he said after a pause. “Major’s likely to come round here any time. … Ought to have been done yesterday.”

“All right,” said Fuselli dully.

He slouched over to the corner of the room, got the worn broom and began sweeping down the stairs. The dust rose about him, making him cough. He stopped and leaned on the broom. He thought of all the days that had gone by since he’d last seen those fellows, Andrews and Chrisfield, at training camp in America; and of all the days that would go by. He started sweeping again, sweeping the dust down from stair to stair.

Fuselli sat on the end of his bunk. He had just shaved. It was a Sunday morning and he looked forward to having the afternoon off. He rubbed his face on his towel and got to his feet. Outside, the rain fell in great silvery sheets, so that the noise on the tar-paper roof of the barracks was almost deafening.

Fuselli noticed, at the other end of the row of bunks, a group of men who all seemed to be looking at the same thing. Rolling down his sleeves, with his tunic hitched over one arm, he walked down to see what was the matter. Through the patter of the rain, he heard a thin voice say:

“It ain’t no use, sergeant, I’m sick. I ain’t a’ goin’ to get up.”

“The kid’s crazy,” someone beside Fuselli said, turning away.

“You get up this minute,” roared the sergeant. He was a big man with black hair who looked like a lumberman. He stood over the bunk. In the bunk at the end of a bundle of blankets was the chalk-white face of Stockton. The boy’s teeth were clenched, and his eyes were round and protruding, it seemed from terror.

“You get out o’ bed this minute,” roared the sergeant again.

The boy was silent; his white cheeks quivered.

“What the hell’s the matter with him?”

“Why don’t you yank him out yourself, Sarge?”

“You get out of bed this minute,” shouted the sergeant again, paying no attention.

The men gathered about walked away. Fuselli watched fascinated from a little distance.

“All right, then, I’ll get the lieutenant. This is a court-martial offence. Here, Morton and Morrison, you’re guards over this man.”

The boy lay still in his blankets. He closed his eyes. By the way the blanket rose and fell over his chest, they could see that he was breathing heavily.

“Say, Stockton, why don’t you get up, you fool?” said Fuselli. “You can’t buck the whole army.”

The boy didn’t answer.

Fuselli walked away.

“He’s crazy,” he muttered.

The lieutenant was a stoutish red-faced man who came in puffing followed by the tall sergeant. He stopped and shook the water off his campaign hat. The rain kept up its deafening patter on the roof.

“Look here, are you sick? If you are, report sick call at once,” said the lieutenant in an elaborately kind voice.

The boy looked at him dully and did not answer.

“You should get up and stand at attention when an officer speaks to you.”

“I ain’t goin’ to get up,” came the thin voice.

The officer’s red face became crimson.

“Sergeant, what’s the matter with the man?” he asked in a furious tone.

“I can’t do anything with him, lieutenant. I think he’s gone crazy.”

“Rubbish. … Mere insubordination. … You’re under arrest, d’ye hear?” he shouted towards the bed.

There was no answer. The rain pattered hard on the roof.

“Have him brought down to the guardhouse, by force if necessary,” snapped the lieutenant. He strode towards the door. “And sergeant, start drawing up court-martial papers at once.” The door slammed behind him.

“Now you’ve got to get him up,” said the sergeant to the two guards.

Fuselli walked away.

“Ain’t some people damn fools?” he said to a man at the other end of the barracks. He stood looking out of the window at the bright sheets of the rain.

“Well, get him up,” shouted the sergeant.

The boy lay with his eyes closed, his chalk-white face half-hidden by the blankets; he was very still.

“Well, will you get up and go to the guardhouse, or have we to carry you there?” shouted the sergeant.

The guards laid hold of him gingerly and pulled him up to a sitting posture.

“All right, yank him out of bed.”

The frail form in khaki shirt and whitish drawers was held up for a moment between the two men. Then it fell a limp heap on the floor.

“Say, Sarge, he’s fainted.”

“The hell he has. … Say, Morrison, ask one of the orderlies to come up from the Infirmary.”

“He ain’t fainted. … The kid’s dead,” said the other man. “Give me a hand.”

The sergeant helped lift the body on the bed again.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said the sergeant.

The eyes had opened. They covered the head with a blanket.

The fields and the misty blue-green woods slipped by slowly as the box car rumbled and jolted over the rails, now stopping for hours on sidings amid meadows, where it was quiet and where above the babel of voices of the regiment you could hear the skylarks, now clattering fast over bridges and along the banks of jade-green rivers where the slim poplars were just coming into leaf and where now and then a fish jumped. The men crowded in the door, grimy and tired, leaning on each other’s shoulders and watching the plowed lands slip by and the meadows where the golden-green grass was dappled with buttercups, and the villages of huddled red roofs lost among pale budding trees and masses of peach blossom. Through the smells of steam and coal smoke and of un-washed bodies in uniforms came smells of moist fields and of manure from fresh-sowed patches and of cows and pasture lands just coming into flower.

“Must be right smart o’ craps in this country. … Ain’t like that damn Polignac, Andy?” said Chrisfield.

“Well they made us drill so hard there wasn’t any time for the grass to grow.”

“You’re damn right there warn’t.”

“Ah’d lak te live in this country a while,” said Chrisfield.

“We might ask ’em to let us off right here.”

“Can’t be that the front’s like this,” said Judkins, poking his head out between Andrews’s and Chrisfield’s heads so that the bristles of his un-shaven chin rubbed against Chrisfield’s cheek. It was a large square head with closely cropped light hair and porcelain-blue eyes under lids that showed white in the red sunburned face, and a square jaw made a little grey by the sprouting beard.

“Say, Andy, how the hell long have we all been in this goddam train? … Ah’ve done lost track o’ the time. …”

“What’s the matter; are you gettin’ old, Chris?” asked Judkins laughing.

Chrisfield had slipped out of the place he held and began poking himself in between Andrews and Judkins.

“We’ve been on this train four days and five nights, an’ we’ve got half a day’s rations left, so we must be getting somewhere,” said Andrews.

“It can’t be like this at the front.”

“It must be spring there as well as here,” said Andrews.

It was a day of fluffy mauve-tinted clouds that moved across the sky, sometimes darkening to deep blue where a small rainstorm trailed across the hills, sometimes brightening to moments of clear sunlight that gave blue shadows to the poplars and shone yellow on the smoke of the engine that puffed on painfully at the head of the long train.

“Funny, ain’t it? How li’l everythin’ is,” said Chrisfield. “Out Indiana way we wouldn’t look at a cornfield that size. But it sort o’ reminds me the way it used to be out home in the spring o’ the year.”

“I’d like to see Indiana in the springtime,” said Andrews.

“Well you’ll come out when the wa’s over and us guys is all home … won’t you, Andy?”

“You bet I will.”

They were going into the suburbs of a town. Rows and clusters of little brick and stucco houses were appearing along the roads. It began to rain from a sky full of lights of amber and lilac color. The slate roofs and the pinkish-grey streets of the town shone cheerfully in the rain. The little patches of garden were all vivid emerald-green. Then they were looking at rows and rows of red chimney pots over wet slate roofs that reflected the bright sky. In the distance rose the purple-grey spire of a church and the irregular forms of old buildings. They passed through a station.

“Dijon,” read Andrews. On the platform were French soldiers in their blue coats and a good sprinkling of civilians.

“Gee, those are about the first real civies I’ve seen since I came overseas,” said Judkins. “Those goddam country people down at Polignac didn’t look like real civilians. There’s folks dressed like it was New York.”

They had left the station and were rumbling slowly past interminable freight trains. At last the train came to a dead stop.

A whistle sounded.

“Don’t nobody get out,” shouted the sergeant from the car ahead.

“Hell! They keep you in this goddam car like you was a convict,” muttered Chrisfield.

“I’d like to get out and walk around Dijon.”

“O boy!”

“I swear I’d make a bee line for a dairy lunch,” said Judkins.

“Hell of a fine dairy lunch you’ll find among those goddam frogs. No, vin blank is all you’ld get in that goddam town.”

“Ah’m goin’ to sleep,” said Chrisfield. He stretched himself out on the pile of equipment at the end of the car. Andrews sat down near him and stared at his mud-caked boots, running one of his long hands, as brown as Chrisfield’s now, through his light short-cut hair.

Chrisfield lay looking at the gaunt outline of Andrews’s face against the light through half-closed eyes. And he felt a warm sort of a smile inside him as he said to himself: “He’s a damn good kid.” Then he thought of the spring in the hills of southern Indiana and the mocking-bird singing in the moonlight among the flowering locust trees behind the house. He could almost smell the heavy sweetness of the locust blooms, as he used to smell them sitting on the steps after supper, tired from a day’s heavy plowing, while the clatter of his mother’s housework came from the kitchen. He didn’t wish he was back there, but it was pleasant to think of it now and then, and how the yellow farmhouse looked and the red barn where his father never had been able to find time to paint the door, and the tumble-down cowshed where the shingles were always coming off. He wondered dully what it would be like out there at the front. It could-n’t be green and pleasant, the way the country was here. Fellows always said it was hell out there. Well, he didn’t give a damn. He went to sleep.

He woke up gradually, the warm comfort of sleep giving place slowly to the stiffness of his uncomfortable position with the hobnails of a boot from the back of a pack sticking into his shoulder. Andrews was sitting in the same position, lost in thought. The rest of the men sat at the open doors or sprawled over the equipment.

Chrisfield got up, stretched himself, yawned, and went to the door to look out. There was a heavy important step on the gravel outside. A large man with black eyebrows that met over his nose and a very black stubbly beard passed the car. There were a sergeant’s stripes on his arm.

“Say, Andy,” cried Chrisfield, “that bastard is a sergeant.”

“Who’s that?” asked Andrews getting up with a smile, his blue eyes looking mildly into Chrisfield’s black ones.

“You know who Ah mean.”

Under their heavy tan Chrisfield’s rounded cheeks were flushed. His eyes snapped under their long black lashes. His fists were clutched.

“Oh, I know, Chris. I didn’t know he was in this regiment.”

“God damn him!” muttered Chrisfield in a low voice, throwing himself down on his packs again.

“Hold your horses, Chris,” said Andrews. “We may all cash in our checks before long … no use letting things worry us.”

“I don’t give a damn if we do.”

“Nor do I, now.” Andrews sat down beside Chrisfield again.

After a while the train got jerkily into motion. The wheels rumbled and clattered over the rails and the clots of mud bounced up and down on the splintered boards of the floor. Chrisfield pillowed his head on his arm and went to sleep again, still smarting from the flush of his anger.

Andrews looked out through his fingers at the swaying black box car, at the men sprawled about on the floor, their heads nodding with each jolt, and at the mauve-grey clouds and bits of sparkling blue sky that he could see behind the silhouettes of the heads and shoulders of the men who stood in the doors. The wheels ground on endlessly.

The car stopped with a jerk that woke up all the sleepers and threw one man off his feet. A whistle blew shrilly outside.

“All right, out of the cars! Snap it up; snap it up!” yelled the sergeant.

The men piled out stiffly, handing the equipment out from hand to hand till it formed a confused heap of packs and rifles outside. All down the train at each door there was a confused pile of equipment and struggling men.

“Snap it up. … Full equipment. … Line up!” the sergeant yelled.

The men fell into line slowly, with their packs and rifles. Lieutenants hovered about the edges of the forming lines, tightly belted into their stiff trench coats, scrambling up and down the coal piles of the siding. The men were given “at ease” and stood leaning on their rifles staring at a green water-tank on three wooden legs, over the top of which had been thrown a huge piece of torn grey cheese-cloth. When the confused sound of tramping feet subsided, they could hear a noise in the distance, like someone lazily shaking a piece of heavy sheet-iron. The sky was full of little dabs of red, purple and yellow and the purplish sunset light was over everything.

The order came to march. They marched down a rutted road where the puddles were so deep they had continually to break ranks to avoid them. In a little pine-wood on one side were rows of heavy motor trucks and ammunition caissons; supper was cooking in a field kitchen about which clustered the truck drivers in their wide visored caps. Beyond the wood the column turned off into a field behind a little group of stone and stucco houses that had lost their roofs. In the field they halted. The grass was brilliant emerald and the wood and the distant hills were shades of clear deep blue. Wisps of pale-blue mist lay across the field. In the turf here and there were small clean bites, that might have been made by some strange animal. The men looked at them curiously.

“No lights, remember we’re in sight of the enemy. A match might annihilate the detachment,” announced the lieutenant dramatically after having given the orders for the pup tents to be set up.

When the tents were ready, the men stood about in the chilly white mist that kept growing denser, eating their cold rations. Everywhere were grumbling snorting voices.

“God, let’s turn in, Chris, before our bones are frozen,” said Andrews.

Guards had been posted and walked up and down with a business-like stride, peering now and then suspiciously into the little wood where the truck-drivers were.

Chrisfield and Andrews crawled into their little tent and rolled up together in their blankets, getting as close to each other as they could. At first it was very cold and hard, and they squirmed about restlessly, but gradually the warmth from their bodies filled their thin blankets and their muscles began to relax. Andrews went to sleep first and Chrisfield lay listening to his deep breathing. There was a frown on his face. He was thinking of the man who had walked past the train at Dijon. The last time he had seen that man Anderson was at training camp. He had only been a corporal then. He remembered the day the man had been made corporal. It had not been long before that that Chrisfield had drawn his knife on him, one night in the barracks. A fellow had caught his hand just in time. Anderson had looked a bit pale that time and had walked away. But he’d never spoken a word to Chrisfield since. As he lay with his eyes closed, pressed close against Andrews’s limp sleeping body, Chrisfield could see the man’s face, the eyebrows that joined across the nose and the jaw, always blackish from the heavy beard, that looked blue when he had just shaved. At last the tenseness of his mind slackened; he thought of women for a moment, of a fair-haired girl he’d seen from the train, and then suddenly crushing sleepiness closed down on him and everything went softly warmly black, as he drifted off to sleep with no sense but the coldness of one side and the warmth of his bunkie’s body on the other.

In the middle of the night he awoke and crawled out of the tent. Andrews followed him. Their teeth chattered a little, and they stretched their legs stiffly. It was cold, but the mist had vanished. The stars shone brilliantly. They walked out a little way into the field away from the bunch of tents.

A faint rustling and breathing noise, as of animals. herded together, came from the sleeping regiment. Somewhere a brook made a shrill gurgling. They strained their ears, but they could hear no guns. They stood side by side looking up at the multitudes of stars.

“That’s Orion,” said Andrews.

“What?”

“That bunch of stars there is called Orion. D’you see ’em. It’s supposed to look like a man with a bow, but he always looks to me like a fellow striding across the sky.”

“Some stars tonight, ain’t there? Gee, what’s that?”

Behind the dark hills a glow rose and fell like the glow in a forge.

“The front must be that way,” said Andrews, shivering.

“I guess we’ll know tomorrow.”

“Yes; tomorrow night we’ll know more about it,” said Andrews. They stood silent a moment listening to the noise the brook made.

“God, it’s quiet, ain’t it? This can’t be the front. Smell that?”

“What is it?”

“Smells like an apple tree in bloom somewhere. … Hell, let’s git in, before our blankets git cold.”

Andrews was still staring at the group of stars he had said was Orion.

Chrisfield pulled him by the arm. They crawled into their tent again, rolled up together and immediately were crushed under an exhausted sleep.

As far ahead of him as Chrisfield could see were packs and heads with caps at a variety of angles, all bobbing up and down with the swing of the brisk marching time. A fine warm rain was falling, mingling with the sweat that ran down his face. The column had been marching a long time along a straight road that was worn and scarred with heavy traffic. Fields and hedges where clusters of yellow flowers were in bloom had given place to an avenue of poplars. The light wet trunks and the stiff branches hazy with green filed by, interminable, as interminable as the confused tramp of feet and jingle of equipment that sounded in his ears.