Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Page 4

  IF you worked for a grocer or a candy maker, or even an undertaker, and went around talking about what inferior groceries, or candy, your employer sold, or how unsatisfactory all funerals were, you would not, unless you were a fool, expect any advancement or honors in your chosen business or profession, would you? Then why in the name of heaven do otherwise intelligent men like Leslie Yawfitz or Walter Rose talk contemptuously about the mismanagement, waste and stupidity of war and then expect to receive promotions or decorations, becoming sullen and dissatisfied when those things fail to appear?

  I tell you war is a business, like anything else, and if you get anywhere in it, you've got to adjust yourself to its peculiarities and play your cards the way they fall.

  CAPTAIN TERENCE L. MATLOCK

  WHEN my platoon sergeants had assembled, I I read the order granting liberty to fifty men from each company. . . . “Trucks will pick up the liberty party at two o'clock, this afternoon, at Regimental Headquarters, and the same trucks will be waiting for the men in Celles-le-Cher in front of the Y.M.C.A. hut, until eight o'clock, Sunday night,” I read. Then we went over the company roster, squad by squad, and picked the men who were to go. Sergeant Dunning looked at his watch. It was 11:10. “I guess the boys will have to hurry to make that two o'clock truck,” he said. My other sergeants moved away also, but I stopped them.

  “Before these men go on liberty, I want their equipment shined up; their rifles cleaned and oiled, and their extra clothes washed and hung on the line to dry.” The sergeants saluted me and turned to go.

  “Yes, sir,” they said.

  “Wait a minute,” I continued. “Don't be so fast: I'll inspect the rifles and equipment of the liberty party at 12:30 in the billets. Then, at 1 P.M. have each man report to me, outside the office, with his extra clothes washed and wrung out. . . . And tell the men they'd better wash them clean! . . . ”

  Promptly at one o'clock the men began lining up outside the company office, their uniforms scraped and brushed, their faces shining. It had rained the night before and they picked their way across the muddy courtyard, so as not to soil their boots, which had been rubbed with a mixture of soot and dubbing. Across the arm of each man were the clothes he had washed out.

  I sat at a table in the courtyard with Sergeant Boss, my top sergeant, and Corporal Waller, my clerk, who had the passes made out and ready for the men, beside me. Then the first man, Private Calhoun, came up and spread his clothes on the table. I opened them up, looking carefully at the seams.

  “Is that your idea of a clean pair of drawers?” I asked.

  “That's mildew,” he said; “I tried, but I couldn't get it out, sir.”

  “Well, go back and try some more,” I said.

  Calhoun turned away, and as he did somebody at the rear of the line gave me the raspberry.

  “Who did that?” I asked.

  Nobody answered.

  The second man had placed his clothes on the table. I picked them up and threw them in the mud without looking at them. Then as each man came up with his clothes, I took them from his arm and threw them into the mud-puddle. After that, I took the passes from Waller, tore them into tiny pieces and scattered them on a pile of manure. . . .

  “When you men have learned to respect your commanding officer, things are going to be better all the way round,” I said.

  FIRST SERGEANT PATRICK BOSS

  I'VE seen some pretty bad outfits in my time, but this one takes the cake. In the old days men knew how to soldier and how to take care of themselves. They were tough birds all right, but they knew discipline, and they respected the officers over them because the officers respected them, too. In the first place, you had to be an A No. 1 man to get in: They weren't taking just anything in those days.—Well, they've let the bars down now, all right! Look at the riffraff we get.—Half of them, right now, don't know the difference between the orders “right front into line” and “on right into line.” Part of the company starts to execute one command, and a part another, while some of the men just stand still, looking about them helplessly. I've tried to beat it into their thick heads. I've tried and tried.—Christ, it's enough to make a man tear out his hair, I tell you! . . .

  In the old days they used to say that a company with a good top sergeant didn't need a captain. I guess that's true. I don't want to throw any bouquets at myself, but if it wasn't true, I don't know what would become of this one. Nit-wit Terry—that ribbon-selling wonder! . . . How do men like him get a commission, anyway? It beats me. It's over my head. Well, anyway, I'm getting out of the outfit when this hitch is done. It's not like it was in the old days, when a man could really have some self-respect.

  PRIVATE ROGER JONES

  I NEVER saw the trenches so quiet as they were that time at Verdun. There wasn't a squarehead in sight, and except for the fact that they fired a machine gun every once in a while, and sent up a rocket, you wouldn't have known there was anybody ahead of us at all. Everything would be very quiet when suddenly the rocket would go whizzing up and the machine gun would splutter a time or two. Then a few minutes later another rocket would go off, farther down the trench, and there would be a dozen more machine gun bullets to go with it.

  The boys made up a story that there wasn't anybody in front of us except an old man, who rode a bicycle, and his wooden legged wife. The man would ride down the duckboards, with his wife running behind him carrying the machine gun. Then the man would stop and send up a rocket, while the old woman fired the gun. After that they started all over, and kept it up all night.

  The boys talked about the old German, and his wife with the wooden leg, until, after a while, everybody began to believe they were actually there.

  “It's just like a German to make his wife run behind him and carry the heavy gun,” said Emile Ayres one night. “They all beat their wives, too, I've heard it said.”

  “That's a lie!” said Jakie Brauer whose mother and father were both born in Germany. “Germans are as good to their wives as Americans, or anybody else!”

  “Then why don't he carry the gun sometime?” Emile asked; “why don't he carry the gun and let the old woman ride on the bicycle?”

  PRIVATE CARTER ATLAS

  FOR breakfast weak coffee, a thin slice of bread and a dipper full of watery soup; for dinner two soggy potatoes, with dirt still clinging to their jackets, a piece of meat the size of a man's thumb and a spoonful of jam; for supper more coffee, but weaker this time, and a pan full of unseasoned rice.—How can a man keep going on such rations? But try to get more! Try and see what happens to you!

  I thought about food all the time: I remembered all the good meals I had ever eaten and thought of rare dishes, such as truffles or ortolans, which I had read about, but never tasted. I used to plan my first meal on the outside, but thinking about those things all the time made me so hungry, I was almost crazy. When I closed my eyes I could see a thick, luscious steak, broiled a deep brown, a lump of butter melting over it and becoming a part of its juices. I could see the steak, surrounded by tender, French fried potatoes, and smell its flavor as distinctly as if it were actually before me. I lay on my bunk with my eyes closed, gloating over the steak. . . . “In just a minute I'll cut into it, and begin to eat,” I thought. . . .

  Then the detail returned to the trenches, bringing our supper in a g.i. can. It was rice again, cold and clammy, and when Sergeant Donohoe gave me my part of it, I took it, hungry as I was, and dumped it in the mud. Then I went back to the dugout and lay on my bunk and cried like a baby. If they'd just give me a good meal every once in a while, I wouldn't mind this war so much!

  PRIVATE LUCIEN JANOFF

  MY trouble went back to that pair of shoes the supply sergeant issued me at St. Aignan. They were three sizes too big for me and they felt like they were made out of cast-iron. My heels kept blistering every time I took a hike. They were sore all the time. After a while they got callused, and they didn't blister any more, but when they quit blistering, they hurt worse than eve
r. I couldn't even bear to touch them, they hurt so.

  Finally Roy Winters said he thought there was pus under the calluses and that was why my heels ached so. He said I ought to go to the dressing station and have them opened up. “Nothing doing!” I said. “Fat chance of me doing that! I know well enough what those babies will do to me: They'll give me chloroform, and when I wake up my feet will be cut off at the ankles. . . . ‘What the hell you kicking about?’ they'll say to me; ‘your heels don't hurt you no more, do they?’ . . . That's what they'll say.—You can't fool me. . . . ”

  Then Roy said he would split my heels himself and get the pus out, if I thought I could stand it. Told him to go ahead. Told him I'd stand it, all right. A fellow named Rufe Yeomans and a fellow named Charlie Upson held my legs, so I wouldn't jerk away. I said I wouldn't make a sound. Didn't either while Roy was cutting, but when he was scraping near the bone I hollered some. I couldn't help hollering a little, I guess.

  PRIVATE THOMAS STAHL

  IN Merlaut, where we were billeted, Wilbur Halsey and I were drawing water from the well when the bucket came off and fell to the bottom with a splash. “Wait a minute,” said Wilbur; “I'll go inside and tell the old lady, and get another bucket from her.” A few minutes later the old lady came running out tearing her hair and beating her breasts, with Wilbur walking behind her, trying to explain what had happened. When the old lady reached the well, it was all Wilbur and I could do to keep her from jumping after the bucket. She got more and more excited every minute.

  Allan Methot, who speaks good French, came out of the billet and explained to the woman that it had been an accident, and that Wilbur and I were willing to pay for the bucket, but she knocked the money out of his hand and threw herself on the ground. A crowd of French people had gathered. They stared over the wall, and the old woman pointed at us and began to talk excitedly. Then the French people all made clucking noises and each, in turn, went to the edge of the well and peered over, shaking their heads and spreading their arms out.

  “That must have been an extra fine bucket,” said Wilbur. “The way they act, you'd think it was made out of platinum.”

  By the next day everybody in town had come to look down the well and listen to the old woman's story, and to sympathize with her. That afternoon when we got orders to move, there was a crowd around the well looking down, as if they expected the bucket to jump up into their arms, of its own accord, while the old lady wiped her eyes on the bottom of her petticoat.

  “This is getting on my nerves,” said Wilbur . . . “I'll be glad to get out of this place. Everybody here is nuts.”

  SERGEANT JAMES DUNNING

  LIEUTENANT FAIRBROTHER had just been assigned to my platoon when he thought of a way to find machine gun nests at night. He said four or five men should fill their pockets with rocks and creep along the German lines until they came to a clump of bushes or a mound that looked suspicious. Then they were to throw in a couple of rocks. If there was a machine gun concealed, the throwing of the rocks would make the gunners mad at us, and they would begin to fire, thus exposing their position. Nobody cracked a smile while he was speaking to the platoon, but when he had gone out of the bunk house, we began to laugh.

  “I think one of the men should carry a sky-rocket in his right hand,” said Frank Halligan. “Then, when the machine gunners start firing, he can hold the rocket between his thumb and forefinger until it is struck by one of the passing bullets and ignited. Then the rocket will soar into the air and fall behind the German lines, where the Kaiser is pinning Iron Crosses on a regiment. As the rocket comes down, the Kaiser bends over, and the tip of the hot rocket catches him squarely on his military butt. The Kaiser jerks forward and rubs the place with his hands, thinking that somebody has kicked him, and that the men have mutinied. This frightens His Majesty, and he begins to run toward our lines. As he runs, the whole German army falls in behind him, trying to explain what had happened, but the Kaiser won't listen: He runs and runs until he reaches the Marne, which he tries to jump, falls short, and is drowned. Then the entire German army, out of politeness, jump in also, and are drowned, and the war is over and we all go back to the States.”

  Albert Nallett got up and closed the door. “Don't let anybody hear you talking like that, sarge,” he said. “If they knew at Divisional about your fine military mind, they'd have bars on your shoulders and a Sam Browne buckled around your waist before you could say scat.”

  SERGEANT WILBUR TIETJEN

  I WOULD take up a position in the line, my rifle strapped to my shoulder, the barrel resting on the bank, and look through my telescopic sights at the German trenches, a thousand or more yards away. (A sniper must have patience; that is as important as ability to shoot good.) And so I would lie there for hours, studying the German line, which looked deserted. “There are men there, all right,” I'd say to myself, “and one of them will get careless and show himself before long.” Sure enough, sooner or later, a head would appear over the side of the trench or a man would crawl outside for a minute.

  Then I would figure windage and elevation, line up my sights, slack my body, take a half-breath and squeeze the trigger very slow. More often than not the man I was aiming at would jump up and spin around a couple of times before falling. He looked very comical from where I was—like a toy soldier which somebody had whittled being upset by the wind.

  I was the best rifleman in the regiment, so everybody said. One time, in July, I hit nine men out of a possible twelve. The colonel was in the line that afternoon and he and his adjutant were watching my shots with their strong field glasses. They made a lot over me when I plugged the ninth man and I grinned like a great fellow. You see, the men were so far away, it didn't seem like killing anybody, really. In fact I never thought of them as men, but as dolls, and it was hard to believe that anything as small as that could feel pain or sorrow. If there was a race of people no bigger, say, than your thumb, even the best hearted person in the world could step on one of them and not feel bad about it. When that thought came into my head, I told it to Allan Methot, but he said a fellow had already used it in a book. “Well, it's the truth, even if a book has been wrote about it,” I said.

  PRIVATE JESSE BOGAN

  WE came to a long hill shaped like a semi-circle and dug in against the protected side. Below us the Germans were shelling Marigny, a small town. We could see people running out of the houses, making funny gestures, and down the narrow streets, until they joined the line that filled the highway. Then we dug in on the off side of the hill and waited.

  It was late May and the whole countryside was green and beautiful. Below us, in the valley, fruit trees were in bloom, pink, white and red, running across the valley in strips of color, and spotting the side of the hill. Then a haze settled over the valley, and gradually it got dark.

  The Germans had quit shelling the town. It lay demolished below us. Lieutenant Bartelstone came up: “All right, men! Get your things together. We're going in the wood when it gets dark.” Then he spoke to Sergeant Dunning: “The orders are to stop the Germans and not let them advance an inch farther. . . . ”

  “Well, anyway,” said Alex Marro, after the lieutenant had gone, “that's simple and to the point.”

  “What's the name of this place?” asked Art Crenshaw.

  “I don't know,” said Sergeant Dunning.—“What difference does that make?”

  “I asked a Frenchman on the road,” said Allan Methot, “and he said it was called Belleau Wood.”

  “Come on! Come on!” said Sergeant Dunning. “Get your equipment together, and quit chewing the fat!”

  PRIVATE PHILIP CALHOUN

  AL DE CASTRO and I sat crouched in a small shell hole, excited, watching the German artillerymen destroy Marigny. A shell-shocked dog was huddled against the community wash house. His tail curved under him, and the hair on his back was stiff and erect. Water ran from his eyes and his mouth slavered. Occasionally he would spin rapidly in a circle, and attempt to bite his tail;
then he would stop, exhausted, and snap weakly to right and left; or occasionally he thrust his muzzle to the sky, and his jaws opened widely, but the sound of his voice was lost in the sound of the shelling.

  At last little remained standing in the town except one wall of white limestone. On this wall was a religious print, in a gilt frame, showing a crown of thorns and a bleeding heart from which flames ascended; while beside it, on a wooden peg, hung a peasant's shapeless coat. I lay on my belly and stared at the wall. . . . The shells fell faster and the frightened dog began again to spin and chase his tail. The white wall trembled and a few stones fell, and when I looked up again, the coat had slipped from its peg and lay in the dust like a sprawling, dead bat. . . . Then, suddenly, the shelling stopped, and the silence that followed was terrible. The dog sniffed the air. He lifted his voice and howled.

  I got up, then, and put on my pack and a moment later Al stood beside me. For a moment we both looked at the white wall, still standing, and at the sacred picture untouched in its place.

  A1 walked over to the wall and stood regarding it curiously: “Why should that one wall remain?” he asked. “Why should it alone be spared? . . . ”

  Then as he stood there adjusting his pack, and fumbling with the rusty catch of his cartridge belt, there came a tearing sound, and a sharp report; and down fell the wall in a cloud of dust, smothering the heart from which flames were ascending, and crushing him to death with its weight.

  PRIVATE EDWARD ROMANO

  I WAS out on observation post near Hill 44 and it was raining. There was no wind and the rain fell straight down. To the north there were flashes, like heat lightning, along the horizon, and the low growling of distant batteries. As I crouched in the trench, wet to the skin and shivering with cold, I thought: “It's quiet here to-night, but up to the north terrible things are happening: There, at this instant, men are being torn to pieces, or stabbed to death with bayonets.”