Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Page 15

AFTER supper I clear the table and wash the dishes, while my sister sits in a chair and tells me about her work at the office, or reads the morning paper out loud. One night she came on an item about the French Academy honoring the German scientist, Einstein, and conferring some sort of an honorary degree upon him. There were a lot of speeches made about the healing of old wounds, hands across the border, mutual trust and confidence, misunderstandings, etc. There was a picture of the ceremony, and my sister described that also.

  “If it was a mistake and a misunderstanding all the way round, what was the sense of fighting at all?” I asked. I put down the dish cloth and felt my way to the table.

  My sister sighed, as if she were very tired, but she did not answer me.

  “Since they're all apologizing and being so Goddamned polite to each other,” I continued, “I think somebody should write me a note on pink stationery as follows: ‘Dear Mr. Yawfitz: Please pardon us for having shot out your eyes. It was all a mistake. Do you mind, awfully?’”

  “Don't get bitter again, Leslie,” said my sister.

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  “Don't get bitter again, Leslie. Please don't get bitter.”

  Then I went back to the sink and finished wiping the dishes.

  PRIVATE MANUEL BURT

  I REMEMBER it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, and not three years ago. The date was October 2nd, 1918, and my company was lying in reserve, not far from a shelled town, having come up to the line the night before, and dug in. A little before daybreak Sergeant Howie came over to the hole where Clarence Foster and I were sleeping, and began hitting my feet with the butt of his rifle. I turned over and sat up, and when the sergeant saw who I was, he seemed disappointed.

  “I'm looking for O'Brien,” he said; “Lieutenant Fairbrother wants to send some reports back to Regimental.” Then he added: “By God! you can never find that bugler when you want him. . . . ”

  The sky was still dark, but toward the east it was getting a little gray. Corporal Foster woke up, then, and began to rub his eyes. He started to speak, but changed his mind. He turned on his belly, folded his arms under him for a pillow, and went back to sleep. I lay back, too, but a few seconds later the sergeant began tapping my hobnails again. “Come on, get out of there!” he said . . . “Come on! You'll do!”

  I stood up and began to curse the outfit, but Howie did not pay any attention to me. “Come on, Burt!” he said again. “The Lieutenant's waiting. . . . Come on: get going!” I got up, then, and followed the sergeant back to an old barn where Lieutenant Fairbrother and Pat Boss, the top sergeant, were waiting. The top handed me the reports and told me what to do. “You better have your rifle loaded and unlocked,” he said; “there's not any line through the woods, and you might run into a German patrol.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “You'd better fix your bayonet, too,” said Lieutenant Fairbrother. Then he said: “I've told you men time and time again to keep bayonets fixed when you're on the line. . . . I've told you over and over! . . . ” His voice was high and nervous, as if he were going to beat in the field desk with his open palms.

  I took out my bayonet and fixed it. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  When I came out, the sky was getting grayer, but it was still not light enough to be seen, so I walked through an old field, pitted with shell holes and grown over with weeds, until I reached the Somme-Py road, but I kept my eyes and ears open. Later on I cut off from the road, and through the woods, and I walked more cautiously. I was beginning to feel better. I remember thinking that if I had a cup of hot coffee, I'd be all right. It was light before I knew it; even among the trees a dim, gray light filtered. It was lonely and quiet in the wood and I felt cut off from everything and entirely alone. Pretty soon I found a path which ran in the direction I was going, and was following it, thinking about a good many things, when I turned a bend, and there, to one side of the path, was a young German soldier. He was sitting with his back to a tree, eating a piece of brown bread. I stood for a few minutes watching him. The bread kept crumbling in his hands, and he would lean forward and pick up the pieces which had fallen onto the ground. I noticed that he didn't have a rifle with him, but he carried side arms. I stood there, not knowing what to do. At first I thought I'd tiptoe back around the bend, and cut through the woods to the right, but that looked as if I were yellow.

  While I stood there fingering my rifle, the German turned and saw me watching him. He sat staring at me, as if paralyzed, his hand, with a crumb of bread in it, half raised to his lips. He had brown eyes, I noticed, and golden brown skin, almost the color of an orange. His lips were full, and very red, and he was trying to grow a mustache. It was dark brown, as fine as corn-silk, but it hadn't come out evenly on his lip. Presently he got up and we stood looking at each other for what seemed a long time, as if neither of us could make up our minds what to do.

  Then I remembered what they had told us in training camp about Germans, and I began to get sore at him. I could see that he was getting sore, too. Suddenly he dropped his bread among the leaves and reached for his pistol, and at the same moment I raised my rifle he raised his pistol, but I was the one who fired first. I kept thinking: “Does he think he owns this path? Does he think he can make me sneak off through the woods, as if I were afraid of him? . . . ”

  The German had jumped behind a tree and was emptying his clip at me. His bullets were coming close, knocking off bark above my head. Then, when he had no more bullets left, he turned and tried to run through the woods, and I dropped to my knees, took careful aim and got him between the shoulder blades. He fell on his face and lay flat, got up and staggered, and turned his face toward me. His face was frightened and his eyes were twitching. I gave him the last bullet I had and he fell once more. He tried to get up again, and rush me with a trench knife, but I ran over to him and when he raised his chin up, I let him have my bayonet. I caught him under the chin and the bayonet went through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. He grunted once, and was dead before he touched the ground again.

  I stood there pulling at the bayonet, but it wouldn't come out of him. I put my hobnailed shoe in his face and tugged at the bayonet, but my foot kept slipping across his face, scraping the flesh away. Finally I unsnapped the bayonet from my rifle. When I got it off, I began to run down the path as fast as I could. I reached the edge of the wood and hid in some underbrush until I quit trembling. When I was quieter, I delivered the reports to Regimental and told the runners sitting there about the German I had killed in the woods. Everybody got excited and they made me tell it over and over. Coming back I didn't want to pass him where he lay across the path, but I thought: “I'm in no way to blame for this. He'd have killed me, if I hadn't got him first.”

  Again I tried to pull my bayonet out of him, but I couldn't put my foot in his face any more. As I stood there, I began to feel exhilarated and to laugh. “Well, there's one Heinie who won't do any more harm,” I said. Then I took a ring off his finger for a souvenir. I put it on my own finger and kept turning it around. . . . “This is a ring off the first man I ever killed,” I said, as if I were speaking to an audience. . . . But before I got back to the line, I took the ring off and threw it into the underbrush. . . . “I shouldn't have put on his ring,” I thought; “that will tie us together forever.”

  I remember all this happened on October 2nd, because we attacked the next day, and that was October 3rd, according to the official records. I kept thinking about that soldier lying across the path with my bayonet in him, and I talked it over one day with Rufe Yeomans. He said there was no reason to blame myself. All the boys I talked to about it said the same thing. And so I forgot all about that German boy. It was only after the war was over, and I was demobilized, that I began thinking of him again. He came very gradually. At first I had a feeling that the ring I had taken was still on my finger, and I couldn't get it off. I would wake up at night tugging at my finger. Then I would feel ashamed because I was frighten
ed, and I would lie back again and try to go to sleep. I had dreams about him, finally, in which I saw his face. And then one night, when I was fully awake, I knew that he was in the room with me, although I could not see him. I lay in the room knowing that he was there. “He'll go away again, if I'm quiet,” I thought; “I've nothing to reproach myself with. He'll go away of his own accord.” But the German wouldn't go away. It got so that he was with me in the daytime, too. He was with me when I woke in the morning. He went with me to work. He followed me everywhere. I couldn't do my work any more, and I lost my job. Then I rented a small room on Front Street where nobody knew me. I changed my name, thinking I could hide from him, but I couldn't. He found me that first night, and came into the small room when I opened the door.

  When I knew that he was there, I lay back in my bed and cried. I knew it was no use fighting him any longer. There was no use running away. Until then I had not seen him, when I was awake, but I saw him that night. He came suddenly out of space and stood at the foot of my bed, and looked at me. I could see the marks on his face which my hobnails had made. My bayonet was still sticking under his chin, driven in so far that the hilt hardly touched his chest. Then he spoke to me: “Take this bayonet out of my brain.”

  I said: “I would take it out, if I could, but I cannot: It is driven in too deeply.” Then he handed me the ring that I had thrown away. “Wear my ring!” he said. “Put it on your finger.” I held out my hand and he slipped the ring on my finger. “Wear it forever,” he said; “Wear it forever and ever!”

  My throat was dry and my heart was pumping rapidly. I put trembling hands over my eyes and closed them tight, but I could not shut him out. He stood waiting beside my bed, and would not go away. He spoke again, finally, his voice puzzled and gentle:

  “When I looked up that morning and saw you standing in the path, my first thought was to come over to you and offer you a piece of my bread. I wanted to ask you questions about America. There were many things we could have talked about. You could have told me about your home, and I could have told you about mine. We could have gone through the woods looking for birds’ nests, laughing and talking together. Then, when we knew each other better, I would have shown you a picture of my sweetheart and read you sentences from her letters.” He stopped talking and looked at me: “Why didn't I do what I wanted to?” he asked slowly . . .

  “I don't know!” I said.

  I sat up against the back of my bed, but I could not look into his eyes. He stood silent and presently I began to speak again: “I saw you eating your bread before you saw me. Before you turned around, I smiled at you, because you reminded me so much of a boy from my home town who used to laugh a lot and tell jokes. His name was Arthur Cronin and we played together in our high school orchestra. He was trying to grow a mustache, too, but it wouldn't come out very well, and the girls kidded him about it. . . . At first I wanted to laugh and sit beside you and tell you that. . . . ”

  “Why didn't you do it?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “Why did you kill me?” he asked sadly. “Why did you want to do that?”

  “I wouldn't do it again!” I whispered. “Before God, I wouldn't!”

  The German boy rolled his head from side to side; then he raised his arms and held them outward. . . . “All we know is that life is sweet and that it does not last long. Why should people be envious of each other? Why do we hate each other? Why can't we live at peace in a world that is so beautiful and so wide?”

  I lay on my back and pressed my pillow over my mouth and beat at the bed with my weak hands. I could feel ice flowing from my heart toward my head and toward my feet. My hands were cold, too, and dripping with sweat, but my lips were parched and clung together. When I could stand it no longer, I jumped out of bed and stood in the dark room trembling, my body pressed against the wall. . . . “I don't know,” I whispered; “I can't answer your questions. . . . ”

  Then somebody, who was not myself, came into my body and began to shout with my voice, beating upon the door with my hands. “I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!” he said over and over, his voice getting steadily louder.

  PRIVATE COLIN URQUHART

  I SAW much during my thirty years as a professional soldier, and I have watched the reactions of many men to pain, hunger and death, but all I have learned is that no two men react alike, and that no one man comes through the experience unchanged. I have never ceased to wonder at the thing we call human nature, with its times of beauty and its times of filthiness, or at the level of calm stupidity that lies in between the two.

  I have no theories and no remedies to offer. All I know, surely, is that there should be a law, in the name of humanity, making mandatory the execution of every soldier who has served on the front and managed to escape death there. The passage of such a law is impossible, of course: For Christian people who pray in their churches for the destruction of their enemies, and glorify the barbarity of their soldiers in bronze—those very people would call the measure cruel and uncivilized, and rush to the polls to defeat it.

  LIEUTENANT JAMES FAIRBROTHER

  I WOULD be the last man in the world to deny the right of free speech, but these pacifist propagandists are making our nation a nation of cowards and milksops. They should be muzzled and placed where they belong. Let me tell you something, and I want you to think carefully over my words: Just so long as the United States continues to lead the world in intelligence, wealth and culture, just so long will other nations envy our happiness and fear our prosperity. . . . You've got to look at it that way, whether you want to, or not! . . .

  Why do you think Italy is training an army and preaching militarism? Open your eyes and look around you! Look at Japan! They're ready to spring at our throats at the drop of a hat! And England hates us! I repeat it, my friends: Our “cousins over the sea” hate us! . . . I tell you I know what I'm talking about! . . . “Brotherhood of man,” indeed.—I'd laugh if the situation were not so fraught with danger.—Germany is not to be ignored, either.—How shortsighted we were to let them get on their feet again.—And France hasn't any love for us: anybody who saw her attitude toward our own soldier boys—your sons and mine, gentlemen—knows that! . . .

  And I tell you my knowledge is not hearsay. I know first hand what I'm talking about. I did my bit in the last war. I enlisted when I might have stayed at home and claimed exemption because of my wife and my little children. But no man with a spark of patriotism or an ounce of manhood would do a thing of that sort! . . . And I say, again, my friends: I do not regret the foot I lost crossing the Meuse on that terrible night of November 10th: I feel that I offered that foot on the altar of my country's honor; and I am proud that you, my constituents, have shown your confidence in me by reëlecting me to represent your interests in the House of Representatives. . . .

  PRIVATE RUFUS YEOMANS

  COME up some night and have dinner with us, the wife would be tickled to death to have the captain of my old company for dinner. She says that she feels she knows you already. No fooling!—She really does.—Let me know when you can come, so she can have a good dinner cooked up. You know how women are about those things, I guess. . . . Say, let's make a date right now. Let's make it next Thursday. Marlene Dietrich is on at the Bijou Theatre that night and we can take that in later, if we get tired of talking about the war. All right. Fine. Bring Mrs. Matlock, too, if she'll come. . . .

  Now here's the way you get there: Take the ferry at Cortlandt Street that leaves at 5:04. That puts you in Jersey City in time to get the 5: 18. Be sure to get the 5: 18 instead of the 5: 15 because the 5: 18 is an express and don't stop this side of Westfield. Get off at Durwood, walk three blocks to the . . . Oh, never mind about that. You come as far as the station and I'll meet you in the Ford. Christ! but this is a break—running into you on the street this way!—Don't fail me now. I'll be looking for you. . . . Never mind! Let's talk about that Thursday. We'll have a long talk about old times.

&
nbsp; PRIVATE SAM ZIEGLER

  I WAS taking an automobile trip through the East with my wife and kids, that summer, when I decided to go see the old training camp again. My wife kicked like a steer, when I told her my plans, but finally we decided that she and the kids could visit her sister in Washington, and I would join them there the following Wednesday.

  When I reached the camp, I went up to the commanding officer and told him who I was, and the name of my old outfit. He was very nice to me. He showed me a roster of the post and I looked it over, to see if any of the men I used to soldier with were stationed there. Finally I came to the name, Michael Riggin. . . . “Old Pig Iron Riggin!” I said.—“Well, what do you know about that?”

  “Would you like to see him?” the commanding officer asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “I surely would.—I'd like to talk to him about old times.”

  So the commanding officer sent out for Pig Iron and a little later we were walking about the camp together. I had an idea that I'd like to see the old bunk house we used to occupy before we went across, so Pig Iron got the keys and we went in. On the walls were a number of small silver plates, which marked where each man's bunk had been.

  “That's a very good idea,” I said. Then I stood there thinking. “As I remember it now, my bunk used to be over near the stove,” I said. So we went over and looked at the wall, and sure enough there was a silver plate with my name on it. It gave me a funny feeling to be standing there looking at it. Then Pig Iron and I began to look at the other plates. . . .

  “Frank Halligan,” I said. . . . “Why, I hadn't thought of that old hard tail for years!—What's become of him, Pig Iron?”

  “He's in the service, somewhere,” said Riggin. “I don't know just where, though.”

  Pig Iron was also looking at the plates. “Rowland Geers, . . . was that the fellow who swam the Meuse when the bridge blew up?”