Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Page 14

  PRIVATE HAROLD DRESSER

  THE French Government gave me a Croix de Guerre with palm for crawling out in a barrage and rescuing a wounded French captain and his orderly. That was in April, 1918. Then, in July, I destroyed, single handed, a machine gun nest that was holding up our advance and killing many of our men, and I got both the Medal Militaire and the D.S.C. for that. I got the Medal of Honor in October and this is the way it came about: We were advancing behind our own barrage when the shells commenced falling short, killing some of our men and wounding others. There was no communication by telephone with the batteries, so I volunteered to go back to Regimental and report what the artillerymen were doing.

  The German line made a deep pocket to our left, so the shortest route to Regimental lay across an open field and straight through the German lines. Captain Matlock said I'd never be able to make it through alive, but I thought I could do it, all right, and in ten minutes after I had started, I was at Regimental Headquarters giving them the dope.

  After war was over I returned to my old job with the General Hardware Company and I've been there ever since. In my home town people point me out to strangers and say, “You'd never believe that fellow had a hat full of medals, would you?” And the strangers always say no, they never would.

  PRIVATE WALTER WEBSTER

  “IT was different when war was declared, and the band was playing in Jackson Park and there were pretty girls dressed in nurses’ uniforms urging the men to enlist and fight for their country: it was all different then, and all very romantic. . . . ” That's what I said to Effie's mother when she came to me about breaking the engagement.

  “Effie will marry you, if you insist on it,” her mother said. “She knows what you have suffered. We all know that. She'll go through with the wedding, if you want her to.”

  “All right—I want her to!” I said. “We made a bargain: she promised to marry me if I enlisted. I carried out my part of the contract. She's got to carry out hers.”

  Effie's mother spoke slowly, trying to pick words that wouldn't hurt my feelings. “Probably you don't quite realize how—how—you have changed,” she said. “Effie is a high-strung, sensitive girl, and while we all realize you have been unfortunate, and cannot help your—your present appearance, still . . . ”

  “Go ahead and say it!” I said. “I've got a looking-glass. I know how I look with my face burned and twisted to one side. Don't worry,” I said; “I know how I look, all right!”

  “It isn't that at all, Walter,” her mother said. . . . “We just want you to come to Effie, of your own accord, and release her from her promise.”

  “I won't do it,” I said. “Not as long as I live.”

  Mrs. Williams got up and walked to the door. “You are very selfish, and very inconsiderate,” she said.

  I put my hand on her arm. “She'll get used to me after a while. She'll get so she won't even notice my face. I'll be so good to her, she'll have to love me again.”

  What a fool I was. I should have known Mrs. Williams was right. I shouldn't have gone through with it. I can see Effie's face now. I can see her face that night when we were alone in our room for the first time in that hotel in Cincinnati. How she trembled and covered her face with her hands because she couldn't bear to look at me. “I must get used to that,” I kept thinking. “I must get used to it. . . . ”

  Then I came over to her, but I did not touch her. I got down on my knees and rested my face in her lap. . . . If she had only touched my head with her hand! If she had only spoken one word of understanding! . . . But she didn't. She closed her eyes and pulled away. I could feel the muscles in her legs rigid with disgust.

  “If you touch me, I'll vomit,” she said.

  PRIVATE SYLVESTER KEITH

  I CAME out sullen and resentful, determined that such a thing should never happen again. I felt that if people were made to understand the senseless horror of war, and could be shown the brutal and stupid facts, they would refuse to kill each other when a roomful of politicians decided for them that their honor had been violated. So I organized “The Society for the Prevention of War” and gathered around me fifty young and intelligent men, whose influence, I thought, would be important in the years to come. “People are not basically stupid or vicious,” I thought, “they are only ignorant or ill informed. It's all a matter of enlightenment.”

  Every Thursday the group gathered at our meeting place. They asked innumerable questions concerning the proper way to hold a bayonet, and the best way to throw hand grenades. They were shocked at the idea of gas attacks on an extended front, and the brutality of liquid fire left them indignant and profane.

  I was pleased with myself and proud of my pupils. I said: “I am planting in these fine young men such hatred of war that when the proper time comes they will stand up and tell the truth without fear or shame.” But some one began organizing a company of National Guard in our town about that time and my disciples, anxious to protect their country from the horrors I had described, deserted my society and joined in a body.

  PRIVATE LESLIE JOURDAN

  AFTER the war was over I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and invested in a paint factory the money that my father had left for the completion of my musical education. I met Grace Ellis and she married me. We own our own home and we have three fine, healthy children. We have enough money laid by in safe bonds to keep us comfortably for the remainder of our lives. All in all I have prospered beyond the average and Grace, who really loves me, has been happy.

  I had almost forgotten that I had ever played the piano at all when one day I ran across Henry Olsen in the lobby of the Tutweiler Hotel. He told me that he was touring the principal cities of the South in a series of concerts, and that the critics had given him fine notices wherever he had been. Olsen and I had studied together in Paris, under Olivarria, back in 1916, when we were both kids.

  Henry couldn't get over the fact that I'd given up playing the piano. I tried to get him off the subject but he kept coming back to it and reminding me how Olivarria (he's dead now) used to say that I had more ability than all his other pupils combined, and to predict that I was going to be the great virtuoso of my day.

  I laughed and tried to change the subject again. I commenced telling him about the way I had prospered in the paint business, but he kept cross-examining me closely and bawling me out for having given up my music until finally I had to do it. I took my hands from my pockets and rested them quietly on his knee. My right hand is as good as it ever was, but shrapnel has wrecked the other one. Nothing remains of my left hand except an elongated thumb and two ragged teats of boneless flesh.

  After that Henry and I talked about the paint business, and how I had prospered in it, until it was time for him to leave for his concert.

  PRIVATE FREDERICK TERWILLIGER

  ONE night when we were in a quiet sector near Verdun, Pig Iron Riggin broke me out to go on watch until daylight. When I got to my post, I stood on a fire-step and stuck my head above the trench to get a breath of fresh air. I was still grumbling sleepily to myself, I remember, and I yawned just when I stuck my head up. At that moment I felt a sharp pain and my mouth was full of blood. A stray bullet had gone through both my cheeks without hitting my tongue or touching a single tooth.

  The doctor back at Base One was certainly a fine man. I told him how it happened and he laughed and slapped his leg. “You know what I'm going to do for you, kid? I'm going to give you the prettiest pair of dimples in the army!” he said.

  I got married not long after getting out of service. My wife likes a lot of company, so once or twice a week she asks in some of the neighbors to play bridge or just sit around and listen to the radio. One night she had Ernie and Flossie Brecker over and Flossie said: “It's a shame the Lord didn't give me those beautiful dimples, instead of Mr. Terwilliger.”

  Flossie Brecker has a long neck and pale blue eyes that pop out at you like a frog's, and suddenly I had a picture of her head coming up slowly out of a tre
nch. Well, sir, I laughed so hearty I lost count of the cards and had to deal over. My wife said, “Don't pay any attention to Fred; you'll only make him act sillier! I wish I had dimples like that too.”

  PRIVATE COLIN WILTSEE

  NOW if you boys will gather around closer so that we won't disturb the other classes, I'll tell you a very beautiful experience which was brought into my mind by to-day's golden text. . . . Herman Gladstone and Vincent Toof were “pals out there,” as we used to say on the line. Herman, or “Hermie,” as everybody called him affectionately, was very different from Vinnie Toof! Hermie, while having “a heart of gold,” used bad words, and did a number of things that he should not have done, while Vinnie was deeply religious, and had the fine qualities which I have tried to implant in you boys. Hermie scoffed at patriotism or religion or any of the things we consider sacred: But Vinnie, suspecting a finer side to his “pal,” determined to win him for God, in spite of himself. . . .

  One day when we were in the trenches near St. Etienne, a shell fell where a group of soldiers were playing cards for money, among them being Hermie Gladstone. A fragment of the shell hit Hermie squarely, and it was easy to see that he would soon “stand before his Maker.” Vinnie came at once, when he heard the news. He had a testament in his hand, and when he reached his pal, he knelt down beside him, and began to pray and plead with him to accept Christ for his personal savior. At first Hermie would not listen to him: there was only bitterness in his heart. He cursed and reviled and begged his comrades to make Vinnie go away; but as Vinnie continued to talk to him and to describe the unending torment of Hell fire into which God casts all sinners, Hermie's attitude changed, and he saw he should not regret giving his life for his country: he realized that he could make no nobler sacrifice. A feeling of peace came over Hermie. He repeated the words that Vinnie told him to say and accepted Christ there on the field of battle, dying a few minutes later in his mercy and love. . . . The other men stood with their hats off, and their heads bowed, watching the miracle of Herman Gladstone's conversion. There was not a dry eye among them; but it was fine, manly emotion, and they were not ashamed of their tears!

  And now I see the superintendent has given the signal that the other classes are all through, but before we go into the Sunday-school room, I want you boys to think about the beautiful death of Hermie Gladstone. Some day you may be called upon to defend your country and your God! When that day comes, remember our lives belong not to ourselves, but to the Creator of the Universe and President Hoover, and that we must always obey their will without asking questions! . . .

  PRIVATE ROY HOWARD

  I MET Sadie when I was on leave in Baltimore, and Christ, how I fell for her! She had the sweetest way of doing things I ever seen, like kissing a man when he wasn't expecting it, or holding his face against her breast and running her fingers through his hair. She would laugh and say: “Can you hear my little heart beating all for you, Mr. Soldier Man?”

  She didn't really expect me to marry her, but I done it just the same. It didn't seem right, otherwise; and besides I couldn't bear to think of her alone and unprotected. When I got back to camp, I made her an allotment of every nickel of my pay. I done it gladly; I loved her and wanted her to have it. The boys used to say I was tight, and that hurt more than not having any money to spend for cigarettes or pinard, but I took it all good-natured.

  I wrote Sadie as regular as I could, and I heard once or twice from her, but when I was discharged I didn't know where she was. I tried to trace her through the allotment, but she had moved and I couldn't find her. All I could learn was what the landlady told me, and she said that Sadie had been living with a taxi driver and that she had spent my allotment money on him. She said Sadie was on the turf now, she thought. So I went back to my old job as a riveter, and tried to forget her.

  Of course I'm human, just like the next man, so after a time I met a little Italian girl whose folks had thrown her out and who was up against it, good and plenty; and before long we were living together down on Bleecker Street. She wasn't sweet, the way Sadie was, but I liked her, and we got along without any quarreling. But I didn't like the idea of living with her that way: it made me feel sneaky, so I suggested one day that we get married. Well, Mary (her name was Mary) cried and kissed me and we got married.

  We lived together three years as man and wife, and had two kids in that time, all open and above board, and then one day I met Sadie on Fourteenth Street. She was just as sweet and dainty as she used to be, although anybody could tell that she was a strumpet now. She recognized me at once and tried to beat it, but I stopped her and told her that there wasn't any hard feelings as far as I was concerned. We went in a drug store for a soda. I said: “I remember you don't like anything but chocolate,” and she said, “Do you remember that, after all these years?” I laughed and said, “Oh, yes, I remember that.”

  Sadie told me where she was living, and asked me to come around and see her some night. “Nothing like that,” I said. “I'm married and living happily with my wife. It wouldn't be right to have anything to do with street walkers now.” Sadie reached out and patted my hand in her old sweet way. There were tears in her eyes. “That's right,” she said. Then she asked me about Mary. She hoped that I'd married a good girl who would make me happy. She wanted to know where I was living, and I told her, and she wrote down the address on the inside of a match box. Then she squeezed my hand and wiped her eyes. I felt sorry for her; she looked so helpless and lonely as she walked away. I ran and caught up with her again and took her hand in mine. “If I can ever do anything for you, just let me know,” I said. She shook her head.

  That was Wednesday. On Friday morning when I was eating breakfast, two policemen came around and arrested me for bigamy; and Sadie sat on the witness stand crying into her handkerchief and sending me to prison for five years.

  PRIVATE THEODORE IRVINE

  IT seemed an unimportant flesh wound at first, but it wouldn't heal, and finally an infection of the bone set in. So they amputated my foot, hoping that would stop the infection, and for a time it seemed that it had. Then, when I had begun to hope, the bone began decaying again, and another operation was necessary. It went on and on that way; nothing could stop the rotting bone. By the end of the sixth year they had sawed my leg off in small pieces as far as the knee. I said: “When they unjoint the kneecap, the decay will stop!” But it broke out again, above the joint, and as the rot crept upward toward my thigh, the doctors kept sawing behind it. . . .

  For ten years I have been like a side of beef on a butcher's block. I cannot remember, now, what freedom from pain is like. Everybody wonders at my willingness to stand the agony that I suffer every minute of the day and night. My mother and my wife cannot bear the sight of my suffering any more. Even the doctors cannot bear it: they leave overdoses of morphine near me, a mute hint which I shall not take.

  I cannot get well, but I'm going to live as long as I can. Just to lie here, breathing, conscious of life around me, is enough. Just to move my hands and look at them, thinking: “See, I am alive—I move my hands about,” is enough. I'm going to live as long as I can and fight for my last breath. . . . Better to suffer the ultimate pains of hell than to achieve freedom in nothingness!

  PRIVATE HOWARD VIRTUE

  FOR a week I heard shells falling . . . nothing but shells falling . . . and exploding with blasts that rocked the walls of the dugout. Rocking the walls of the dugout . . . rattling the frosty duckboards. I became afraid that I would die before the meaning of my life was made clear. I thought: “If I use my head, I can get out of this!” I remembered a joke about a man who ran around picking up scraps of paper. After examining each scrap he would discard it quickly, and say, “No, that's not it!” So the doctors pronounced him mentally incompetent, and discharged him from the service. As they handed him his discharge paper, he looked it over carefully, to see that everything was in order. Then he smiled at the doctor triumphantly, and said, “That's it, all right!” “I'
ll do the same thing,” I said; “my life is too valuable to be wasted on a battle-field.” I crawled out over the side of the trench and commenced picking up dead leaves, talking rapidly to myself all the time. Sergeant Donohoe came out after me and coaxed me back to our lines again.

  Back at the hospital, I was afraid those smart doctors would see through my ruse, but I fooled them, too. I was transferred to the United States, and later committed to this madhouse. Here's the irony of the situation: I cannot obtain my freedom, although I'm as sane as any man alive.

  You are a fair man, let me ask you a question: How can I spread the glory of my cousin, Jesus, and how can I baptize him in the River Jordan from this place where my limbs are shackled? How can I thunder the incestuousness of Herodias, or how submit, at last, when that wanton, Salome, completes my destiny . . . shaking her loins for the gift of my head? How can I do these things when my words die flatly against the padding of my cell?

  Cymbals clashing and spears and soldiers cursing and casting lots and blood running in rivers from the poles destroying life and creating life. . . . Rocking! . . . Rocking! . . . And white breasts rosy tipped walking beautifully over ruin and always shells falling . . . nothing but shells falling . . . and exploding with blasts that rock the walls of the dugout. . . . And me crying in the wilderness. . . . Crying with nobody to heed me. . . .

  I have told them over and over why it is necessary that I be released from this place, but the guards only stare at me and chew gum rhythmically with slow, maddening jaws.

  PRIVATE LESLIE YAWFITZ