Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Read online

  “I'll stand here and let him take pot shots at me all day,” I said; “he can't hit me in a thousand years.—See, as I stand now, he's got me covered. But wait! He's got to figure his distance, taking an angle between that dead tree and the farmhouse, probably. Now he's got it all doped out. He's taking his windage and calculating elevation. Now he's all ready to plug me, but by stepping one pace to the right, or doing this clog step, I upset all his calculations. See,” I said, “there goes his bullet two feet to the right. He can't hit me to save his neck,” I said.

  PRIVATE SILAS PULLMAN

  ONLY a few minutes more and we'll be going over. I can hear my watch ticking—ticking. This silence is worse than shelling. . . . I've never been under fire before: I don't know whether I can stand it or not.—This isn't the way I thought it was going to be.—I want to turn and run. I'm yellow, I guess. . . . The other men aren't frightened at all. They just stand there holding their rifles, cracking jokes. . . . Maybe they're as frightened as I am. How do I know? How can I tell what's going on in their minds. . . . Sergeant Mooney is speaking to me: “See that your bayonet is fastened tight,” he says.—I nod my head.—I don't dare speak. . . . Oh, Christ! don't let anybody see how frightened I am.—Don't let them see, please! . . . I won't think about it any more. I'll think about something else.

  Lieutenant Jewett has given the signal. Sergeant Mooney is climbing out of the trench. “All right, over you go!” he says. We're all climbing out. Now we're walking forward slowly.—Why don't the Germans open fire? They know we're coming over. They can see us.—For Christ sake, start firing! We're not fooling you! Go ahead: shoot at us! . . .

  Down! Down!—Down on your belly, you fool! Do you want to be bumped off?—The Germans have opened up. We're down close to the ground, crawling; crawling inch by inch. They haven't got our range yet. . . . “Our orders are to crawl until we're fifty yards from their trenches, and then dash forward and attack.”—Just dash forward, and attack.—That's very simple.—Just attack. . . .

  They've got our range now. Corporal Brockett is hit in the shoulder. He's crawling for a shell hole.—Now he's in it. He's safe from the machine guns’ bullets there. . . . Why doesn't he stop twisting about? That won't help matters.—That won't do any good. . . .

  The bullets are plowing the dirt a foot from my head. Down closer! Hug the ground closer, you fool! . . . Mart Appleton and Luke Janoff are hit now. They fell at the same instant, almost. They lay there quietly, neither of them moving. . . . Now the man next to me is hit. Who is he? . . . His name is Les Yawfitz, I think. He stands up and then falls down. He's shot in the face. Blood is running down his face and into his mouth. He's making a choking sound and is crawling about like an ant. He can't see where he's going. Why don't you lie still. . . . That seems the sensible thing to do: You can't see where you're going, you know.

  We're closer to the trenches. . . . Get up! Get up!—It's time to rush forward and throw grenades. It's time to take the trenches.—We're fighting with bayonets. We're in the German trenches. We're fighting with clubbed rifles and trench knives. There are screams and men running about in confusion. . . . Now everything is quiet again. We've started back with our prisoners.—Sergeant Dockdorf is lying with his throat cut, half in the trench and half out. . . . Jerry Easton is stretched on the German duckboards, his eyelids still fluttering. . . .

  PRIVATE SAMUEL QUILLIN

  IT was partly a dugout, and partly a dwelling, and it had been an officer's casino before we had taken the territory from the Germans, the day before. It faced the Somme-Py road, and immediately we turned it into an evacuation station. When I went up that night, to check the casualties in my battalion, the place was full of wounded men awaiting ambulances. It was in October, I remember, and the air was crisp, with a feeling of frost. For a few minutes I was busy going from man to man, looking at identification tags. Then I heard a whine and a rushing sound in the air. I covered my ears, and braced myself, because I knew by instinct that the shell was going to register a direct hit. The sound increased to a shriek. Then a flash of light and a thundering explosion that blew the walls outward, and I fell swiftly into a lake of ink and lay prone on the bottom and at peace, for a long time, not breathing . . . and then climbed out of the ink slowly, inch by inch, and began to groan. . . .

  “There's a man alive down there,” I heard somebody say. Nobody answered the voice for a moment. Then finally there came another voice: “Nobody could be alive with all that weight on him. . . . ” Then I remembered where I was. I was lying on my back and through the beams, iron sheets and tons of earth, I could see one star, tired and faint in the sky. I became frightened and began to shout. . . .

  “Lie quiet!” said the first voice sharply. “You've got to keep your head. . . . Lie quiet! and listen to what I say: There are hundreds of tons balanced over you. If you move about you'll bring it down.” Then I became quiet. Above me I could see the men moving beams, but very cautiously, taking out the bodies as they came to them. The first man spoke to me again. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  Then after a while I spoke again. “I'm going to start hollering: I'm thinking about those beams mashing me.”

  “You're a fool, if you do,” he said.

  I shut my eyes and began to compose a letter, in my mind, to a girl back home named Hazel Green, making each line rhyme. When I opened them, I could see a whole patch of sky. The patch got bigger and bigger until the last beam was lifted off my chest, and the men helped me out. I stood up, feeling my legs. I walked alone to the dressing station, and the doctor examined me, but there wasn't a scratch on me anywhere.

  “Twenty-six men were taken out of that dugout, and you're the only one that came out alive,” said the doctor. “You've had a lucky escape.”

  “Yes, sir, I sure did,” I said.

  PRIVATE ABRAHAM RICKEY

  I WAS lying in the wheat near Captain Matlock when he got hit and I was the first man to reach him. One machine gun bullet had hit him squarely between the eyes, plowing through his head and coming out at the base of his skull.

  A boy out of the third platoon, named Mart Passy, came up when I called, and together we lifted the Captain and carried him to a trench where stretcher bearers picked him up and took him to the rear.

  After the fighting was over and we were back at Fly Farm getting a batch of replacements, I was telling some of the boys about how Fishmouth Terry got hit. “He fell down without making any noise,” I said. “He just fell down in the wheat and doubled up. I thought he was dead, sure, but he was breathing all right when the stretcher bearers took him. It was just one bullet, but it went all the way through his head. When I turned him on his face, I saw a teaspoonful of brains had run out on the ground.”

  “Wait a minute now . . . take it easy, sailor!” said Sergeant Dunning. “How much brains did you say ran out of Fishmouth Terry's head? . . . ”

  “About a teaspoonful,” I said.

  Everybody shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders.

  “Are you sure it was Captain Matlock you picked up?” the sergeant asked again.

  “Why, yes,” I said. “Sure it was.”

  Everybody began to laugh. . . . “Be reasonable!” said Vester Keith. “Be reasonable!—If that many brains ran out, it couldn't possibly have been our Terry!”

  PRIVATE WILBUR BOWDEN

  IT was pitch dark, not even a star shining, when I crawled into a deep shell hole, and lay there listening. I knew, at once, there was a wounded man with me in the shell hole: I don't know how I knew it: I couldn't see him, certainly, but I did know it. Then I drew my trench knife and braced myself, but he spoke to me in English. He was an outpost sentry from the First Battalion who had run into a German patrol, and been wounded. He whispered all this, his mouth close to my ear. The German trenches were only a short distance away, and we didn't dare make a sound that might be overheard.

  “Where did they get you?” I whispered back.
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  He waited a long time to answer. “In the leg,” he said.

  I took off his first aid packet and straightened out the bandage as best I could. I didn't have a match, and I wouldn't have dared strike it, if I had. I unfastened his belt and pulled his breeches down. Then I slit his drawers with my knife.

  “Which leg is it?” I asked.

  “I'm not sure,” he said slowly.

  “I'll run my hand over your leg,” I whispered, “and when I come to the wounded place, let me know, and I'll put on a bandage.”

  “All right,” he said finally.

  I ran my hand slowly down his left leg from thigh to knee, but he didn't flinch or give any sign of pain. Then I started on his right thigh, feeling cautiously. Suddenly he winced a little. “Is that the place?” I asked. . . . “Yes,” he said.

  His uniform was soaked with blood and my fingers were sticky from touching his legs. I put the bandage on the spot he had indicated and tied it tightly.

  “Am I still bleeding?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “you're not bleeding now.” Then I added: “The wound must be pretty small, after all, because I couldn't even feel it.”

  “It's deep, I guess,” he said.

  When I got the bandage on, he said he felt sleepy, and would take a nap. “That's the ticket,” I said. “You take a nap now, and as soon as I get back to the company, I'll send out a couple of stretcher bearers for you.” He didn't answer me. He'd gone to sleep while I was talking to him.

  When I got back to the line, an hour later, I told Sergeant Boss about the wounded man and he sent out for him, but the man was dead when they found him. We took him into the dugout, and looked at him by candle light: The first thing we saw was a wound in his side that you could lay your fist in. I stood there puzzled, while the men kidded me. Then I took off the bandage I had put on his leg: The skin was unbroken. In fact there wasn't a scratch on his whole body except the one place in his side, from which he had bled to death.

  I've thought about that man a good many times, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Why did he flinch, and say he was wounded in the leg, when he wasn't? Did he really know where he was wounded? Or was it because he knew he was going to die, and my questions bothered him? Did he think it would be easier to let me have my way, and put on a bandage, since I insisted on it? I've thought it over a good many times, without coming to any conclusion.

  PRIVATE EUGENE MERRIAM

  I DELIVERED the message to Lieutenant Bartelstone and turned to go, but the Germans had started shelling the wood again, and the Somme-Py road.

  “You'd better wait until the barrage lifts,” said Lieutenant Bartelstone.

  “No, sir,” I said; “I guess I'd better get on back to Regimental.—I'll get through, all right.”

  “That's a pretty heavy barrage,” he said; “you'd better wait awhile.”

  “I'll be-all right,” I said; “I've been through a hundred worse than that. If I waited for every barrage to lift, I wouldn't get many messages delivered.”

  “Yes, I guess that's right,” said the lieutenant laughing.

  I turned up my coat collar, like it was a rain storm I was going through, and began loping through the woods. There were shells exploding in the tree-tops and the wood was filled with red hot shrapnel. The shrapnel swirled around and whimpered and sounded like horses biting at each other's flanks. It was autumn and the leaves of the trees were red and yellow and brown. They kept raining down before my eyes like dead birds falling to earth. The shelling seemed to get heavier, but I ran on and on. I knew it was useless to duck. . . . Then the woods opened and I saw the road.

  “In just a minute now, I'll be out of the barrage and safe,” I thought.

  PRIVATE HERBERT MERRIAM

  WHEN I got back from the hospital it was late September and the Company was billeted in a wood near Manorville. I asked Sergeant Boss about my brother, Gene, our regimental runner.

  “Well, no, I haven't seen him lately,” he answered, “but then we've been on the move most of the time and I haven't seen anybody from Headquarters hardly.”

  “I'll go over to Regimental to-night and surprise Gene,” I said.

  I threw my equipment down on an empty bunk but Byron Long picked it up. “Why don't you take my bunk, Herbie,” he asked. “That one's broke.—You come over here and swap with me.”

  “Well, for Christ sake!” I said laughing. “What's come over you boys, anyway? Are you practicing up to be boy scouts?”

  Byron didn't say anything, but he looked away.

  “I wouldn't go over to Regimental to see Gene,” said Sergeant Halligan.

  “Why not?” I asked; “there aren't any regulations against it, are there?”

  “I just wouldn't go, that's all.”

  I stood there thinking for a minute; then my heart began to beat too fast. My knees seemed to get weak, and for a minute I thought I was going to fall down.

  “Oh,” I said . . . “Oh, I see!”

  “Why don't you lie down on Byron's bunk for a while,” said Frank Halligan. “It's over against the wall, out of the way, where nobody will be stepping over you.—Why don't you lie down and take a little nap? . . . You must be tired, after that trip from the hospital.”

  “All right,” I said. “I think I will take a nap.”

  “Stretch out all the way,” said Byron. “Here—I'll put my blankets over you, so you won't get cold.”

  Then each man thought up some reason for going outside. They went out, one by one, and stood in the cold until finally I was alone in the bunk house.

  PRIVATE PETER STAFFORD

  WHEN I came out from the ether, I didn't know, at first, where I was, but after a while my mind cleared up and I remembered I was in a hospital, and that they had just cut off my leg. Then the nurse gave me some medicine to swallow and the pain stopped. Everything seemed to get all mixed up. For a little while I would know where I was, and what had happened to me, and then I would doze off and think I was back home again.

  I don't know what time it was when I heard people whispering above my bed. I opened my eyes and looked up and all I saw at first was an elderly lady, with a sweet face, looking down at me. For some reason I thought I was back in Little Rock and that the lady was one of our neighbors, a Mrs. Sellers, come to call on Mamma.

  “Hello, Mrs. Sellers!” I said; “what in the world are you doing up here in my room?”

  Then I seen the doctors and the nurse standing there beside the lady, and I knew where I was. The lady didn't say anything, but she smiled in a friendly way. When I seen my mistake, I spoke to the lady more politely. “I beg your pardon, ma'am,” I said, “but at first I taken you for a lady who runs a boarding-house across the street from where I live.”

  The lady spoke in a very cultured voice: “Do I resemble her a great deal?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” I said; “you sure do!—Why if you had on a dust-apron and a boudoir cap, nobody could ever tell you two apart.”

  Then I knew by the look on the nurse's face that I had made a break. Later I learned that I had been addressing her Majesty, the Queen of England. When I discovered that, I asked the nurse to be sure and tell the queen that Mrs. Sellers was a respectable woman who enjoyed the good-opinion of everybody in Little Rock and she needn't feel ashamed of resembling her. The nurse said she and the queen were good friends and that she'd be sure and tell her the next time they had a visit together.

  I never heard any more about it, but the mistake was unintentional on my part, and it was evidently regarded in that light by the queen. . . . I'll bet, though, she still remembers my error, and that she had had many a good laugh at my expense since that time.

  PRIVATE SIDNEY BELMONT

  THEY tell this story on the colonel of my regiment. He had come up to the line one afternoon, in a private's uniform, after having taken off his eagles, his belt and all other insignia of rank. While standing there inspecting the line, Gene Merriam came up with a message. When he saw the colone
l, he stopped and saluted, in plain view. That made the colonel sore.

  “Say, you stupid little so-and-so,” he shouted, “haven't you got sense enough not to salute an officer on the line? Do you want every sniper in the German army to try to pick me off?” For a time he stood swearing and shaking his fist and then he began to feel sorry for Gene, who was blushing and looking down under the bawling out he was getting. . . .

  “Listen,” the colonel said, “in the future when you want to attract my attention on the line, don't salute me. Come up, instead, and kick me a couple of times and say: ‘Listen to me, you dopey old son of a bitch!’ That's the way to speak to me, when I'm on the line,” said the colonel.

  Later I heard that story told on the colonel of every regiment in France, but it really happened in my outfit.

  PRIVATE RICHARD STARNES

  AFTER the raid that night, we became confused, and unable to find the gap in our wire. There were five of us. Six, if you count the prisoner we had taken for questioning. While we stood there disputing, the Germans began throwing over gas shells. We took out our masks and put them on at once, but the prisoner didn't have a mask, and when the gas started choking him, he dropped down in terror and begged for his life. He cried and wrung his hands and talked about his mother and his home. We paid no attention to him. We wouldn't listen to what he was saying. Then he threw his arms around my knees and clung to me. I have never seen such cowardice. . . . I kept shoving him away with my foot, but he came back, time after time, crying and clinging to my legs. He was beginning to cough by that time, and water was coming out of his eyes.

  Now here's the funny part of the story: As the little swine hugged my knees and cried, a curious feeling of pity came over me, and before I realized what I was doing, I had got down on my knees beside him. I put my arms around him. . . . “Take my mask, brother,” I said gently.—I don't know why I did it. I've never been able to tell why I did it!—I must have been crazy. Certainly no man in his right mind would do a thing like that. . . .