Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Read online

  A Very light went up suddenly, to break in the sky with a faint kiss, and against its flare I saw the intricate intrenchments of rusting barbed wire. I saw, too, the slow rain, gleaming like a crystal against the light, and falling in dead, unslanted lines to the field. I lay huddled and trembling in the shallow trench, my rifle pressed against my body. . . . The rain was washing up bodies of men buried hastily; there was an odor of decay in the air. . . .

  I saw a man walking toward me, upright and unafraid. His feet were bare and his beautiful hair was long. I raised my rifle to kill him, but when I saw it was Christ, I lowered it again. “Would you have hurt me?” he asked sadly. I said yes, and began to curse: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself to let this go on!—You ought to be ashamed! . . . ”

  But he lifted his arms to the sodden field, to the tangled wire, to the charred trees like teeth in a fleshless jaw. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do, if you know! . . . ” It was then that I began to cry, and Christ cried, too, our tears flowing with the slow rain.

  At twelve o'clock my relief came. It was Ollie Teclaw, and I wanted to tell him what I had seen, but I knew that he would only laugh at me.

  LIEUTENANT EDWARD BARTELSTONE

  I CAME off watch cold and sick—shivering; wet to my miserable skin. I could feel vermin itching my back and crawling over my chest. I had not bathed for weeks and my feet had blistered offensively. There was a sour, overpowering smell in the dugout, and it turned my stomach and made me want to vomit. . . . I lighted my candle and looked for a long time at my dirty hands, and my finger nails, caked with muck. A feeling of revulsion came over me. “I'll stand anything else,” I said, “but I won't stand this filth any longer. . . . ” I cocked my pistol and placed it on the shelf beside the candle. . . . “When it's exactly midnight, I'm going to kill myself. . . . ”

  On my bed were some magazines which Archie Smith had read and passed on to me. I picked one up at random, and opened it; and there looking at me with sad, pitying eyes was Lillian Gish. Never in my life have I seen anything so pure or so clean as her face. I kept wrinkling my eyes, as if unable to believe what I saw. Then I touched her cheeks with my finger, but very gently. . . . “Why, you're clean and lovely,” I said in surprise. . . . “You're pure and lovely and sweet! . . . ”

  I cut out the picture and made a leather case for it, and I carried it with me as long as war lasted. I used to look at it every night before I went to bed, and every morning when I awoke. It took me safely through those terrible months and it brought me out, in the end, calm and undisturbed.

  PRIVATE JACOB GELLER

  ONE day a fellow named Harry Waddell and myself came upon a dead German who had fallen across a log and rested on his shoulders. He still had his light knapsack strapped to his back. (The knapsack was made of cowhide with some of the hair still on it. The hair was dark brown, with white markings, and I remember saying to Harry, at the time, it must have come off a Holstein.)

  When Harry and I looked at the man good we saw that he had been killed by a piece of h.e. There was a hole in his chest as big as your fist. Harry and I went through him for souvenirs, but he didn't have anything except a few photographs of his family, and some letters, which we put back in his pocket, in accordance with regulations. Then we turned him over on his belly to see what he had in his knapsack. There was blood all over the knapsack, too, and there was nothing in it except a pair of winter drawers, and a half loaf of brown German bread.

  “That's luck,” said Harry, “we can eat the bread!”

  My mouth commenced to water and I could feel my stomach growling, but when we looked at the bread close we saw that it was covered with blood. (The bread was what the Heinies called pumpernickel, and it was still a little soggy on the inside where the blood hadn't dried out.)

  I took out my knife and tried to scrape off the blood, but when I saw that it went all the way through, I gave up that idea.

  “Don't waste the bread that way!” said Harry. So I cut it in two equal parts and Harry Waddell and me ate every crumb of it.

  PRIVATE WALTER LANDT

  IT was only a small flesh wound, but Lieutenant Bartelstone thought I'd better go back to the dressing station and take a shot of anti-tetanus anyway. When I got there, the two doctors couldn't decide which was the best way to give it to me. The tall doctor thought it should be injected directly into the stomach, and so I pulled up my shirt while he jabbed me, but the glass tube broke, and most of the fluid spilled down my leg. Then the fat doctor said his partner was doing it all wrong, and I took down my pants while he jabbed me in the stern. But his tube broke, too, and then it was the tall doctor's turn to laugh and make humorous remarks. They kept me there, pulling up my shirt, and taking down my pants, for about an hour, while each argued the merits of his method, and tried to get a full shot into me without breaking the tube. The fourth time the tall doctor punctured my belly, my arms and legs were beginning to swell. Then I remember the other doctor saying: “All right, soldier, take down your pants again and we'll show him how it really ought to be done!” After that everything got black, and the room started whirling.

  That's all I remember, but they tell me I hollered without stopping, for two days and two nights, and that I swelled up bigger than a dead nigger who has been lying in a shell hole for a week. Next time I get wounded, I'll have lockjaw and enjoy it.

  PRIVATE GRALEY BORDEN

  WE were detached temporarily from our division and assigned to the French, and for six days and nights we were fighting without sleep and without rest. Since we were fighting under French orders, we drew supplies and food with them also. When the first food arrived, there was red wine and a small ration of cognac for each of us. We were hungry, cold, and very tired, and the cognac warmed our blood, and made the long nights bearable.

  But on the second day, when rations were delivered again, the wine and the cognac were missing from the allowance of the American soldiers. The religious organizations in France had protested against rationing intoxicants to us: It was feared the news would get back to the United States, and that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals would hear of it and would not be pleased.

  LIEUTENANT THOMAS JEWETT

  SERGEANT PRADO and I were examining our position that June morning. To our left, and about half a kilometer in advance of our line, was an isolated clump of small trees. “That grove should be a good place for a squad of machine gunners, if the Germans should attack,” I said.

  Sergeant Prado looked up. “I don't think so,” he said; “I don't think that at all.” He stood there stubbornly, shaking his head. I did not answer him immediately, as if I had not heard. “I think you'd better take several men to those trees and dig a line of trenches there,” I said finally.

  “I wouldn't do that, Lieutenant,” he said. “That clump stands out like a sore thumb. The Germans are sure to figure we'll put men there, and shell hell out of it,—I been expecting that all morning.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said; “but I think you understand my orders.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  A few minutes later Prado and his men had wormed their way through the wheat, and with my field glasses I saw them enter the trees. Then, as I lowered my glasses, and was walking away, I heard one shell in the quiet air. I stopped, turned, and saw it strike short of the clump by ten yards. There was silence while I held my breath, and the German artillerymen recalculated their range. Then there came innumerable shells which twisted and whined in the air and exploded with terrific blasts among the trees. Geysers of dirt, leaves and broken branches sprang upward, and the trunks of the lashed trees bent this way and that, as if a hurricane were lost among them, and could not find its way out.

  The shelling lasted for twenty minutes and then lifted as suddenly as it had begun. I ran through the wheat, terrified, regretting what my vanity had made me do; and when I reached the clump, the first objects I saw were the bodie
s of Alden, Geers and Carroll huddled together, their faces torn away, the tops of their skulls caved in. Lying across a fallen tree, his body ripped from belly to chin, was Sergeant Prado, while Leslie Jourdan stood upright looking down at his hand, from which the fingers had been shot away.

  I leaned against a tree to keep from falling. “I didn't mean to do it,” I said; “I didn't mean to . . . ”

  PRIVATE STEPHEN CARROLL

  WHEN we reached the clump of trees, Sergeant Prado told us to dig in at once.

  “I never heard anything so dumb,” said Rowland Geers. “What's his idea in sending us out here?”

  “Don't ask questions,” said Sergeant Prado. “The government pays you your thirty bucks a month for doing what you're told, not for asking questions.”

  “Doesn't he know the Germans saw us crawling out here?” asked Les Jourdan. “Does he think the Germans are nit-wits?”

  “You'd better start digging,” said Sergeant Prado, “and save your conversation.—Write me a letter about it.”

  Then the first shell hit to the right of the clump, and we flattened against the earth. We lay there for a moment, hoping the shell had been a chance one, but in a few minutes the clump was full of shells. The young saplings swayed back and forth, while broken branches and leaves rained down on us. The ground seemed to explode under us, and the bursting shells and the whirling shrapnel made a noise like men playing different instruments in different keys.

  Bob Alden was lying in the hollow with me. His eyes were turned so that only the whites showed His lids kept fluttering down, and his lips puckered out. Then Rowland Geers crawled in the hollow with us. Bob turned and tried to speak to him and Geers leaned forward, his ear close to Bob's mouth, to catch the words, just as a shell landed squarely in the hole with us.

  PRIVATE CARROLL HART

  SERGEANT TIETJEN was with me that day we took the machine gun nest in Veuilly Wood. We found the crew all killed except one heavyset, bearded man, and he was badly wounded. Just as we came up, the bearded man reached inside his coat and fumbled. I thought he was going to throw a grenade, so I emptied my pistol into him. His arm came away from his coat with a jerking, irregular motion and his palm rested for a moment against his lips. Then the blood in his throat began to strangle him, and he made a gurgling, sighing sound. His eyes rolled back and his jaw fell open.

  I went over and opened his palm to see what he had in it. It was the photograph of a little German girl. She was round-faced, and freckled, and her hair was curled, for the occasion, over her shoulders. “That must have been his daughter,” said Sergeant Tietjen.

  That night I couldn't sleep for thinking of that German soldier. I rolled and pitched about and toward daybreak Tietjen came over and lay down by me. “It's no use blaming yourself that way, fellow,” he said; “anybody in the world would have thought he was going to throw a grenade.”

  PRIVATE WILLIAM ANDERSON

  THERE I was, with my foot split open from heel to toe, and that doctor at the dressing station thought I'd stand for him sewing it up again without giving me anything to deaden the pain, except a couple of drinks of cognac. “I want some sort of an anesthetic!” I said, and I didn't say it in any uncertain voice, either.

  A hospital corpsman tried to tell me that they were almost out of morphine, and that they were saving the little they had for officers. Did you ever hear anything so God damned silly? “What the hell!” I said. “Do you think officers are more delicate than anybody else? Why don't you let everybody draw straws for the morphine? Or make a rule that nobody except blue-eyed men over five feet eight inches are to get it?—Why don't you make some reasonable rule about it?”

  Then the doctor said, “Take that man out and let him lay in the snow for a while. That'll deaden him up some.”

  “By God, I'd like to see you try that once!” I said; “I'd just like to see you try that!—I'll write a letter to the Major General Commandant; I'll write a letter to President Wilson—!”

  Another doctor whose arms were bloody to his elbows said: “For Christ sake, give him a shot, if that will keep his mouth shut.” Just when I was feeling numb I raised up and said to the first doctor: “And by God! you'd better do a first class job on it, too!” The bloody doctor laughed. “Are you still with us, ‘Gentle Annie’?” he asked.

  “______ Jack!” I said.

  PRIVATE MARTIN DAILEY

  I AWOKE in a hospital train. My eyes burned and chest ached and I could feel my leg throbbing with pain. From where I lay, I could catch a glimpse, occasionally, of the French countryside covered with poppies and mustard plants in bloom. I could hear the hum of voices and the clanging of engines when we stopped, for a while, at some station along the way. I lay back and closed my eyes again. There was a stench of disinfectant and dried blood in the coach, and that smell which comes from many men caged together.

  Above me a man talked ceaselessly of Nebraska. His hand, hanging over his bunk, was grayish white and his nails were turning blue. He talked softly, in a slow voice. He wanted to talk a great deal, because he knew he was going to die before we reached the hospital. But there was nobody to listen to him. We lay there, mostly in silence, and thought of our own misery, like newly castrated sheep, too tired to find comfort in curses. We stared at the ceiling dumbly, or glanced out of the doors at the lovely countryside, now in full bloom.

  PRIVATE HENRY DEMAREST

  WHEN I arrived at the hospital, they gave me a hot bath and put a clean night shirt on me. Then an attendant wheeled me into the operating room, where the doctors worked night and day in shifts. I woke up, sometime later, between cool sheets that smelled of lavender.

  The hospital had been a fine, private residence, in its time, and the room where my bed was placed had been the conservatory. Outside, I could see the park, with trees bending this way and that against the wind, like old women with capes spread out. I watched the trees and the rain for a long time. Then I understood for the first time those lines of Verlaine: “Tears fall in my heart like rain upon the town. . . . ” I kept repeating them under my breath.

  A long time afterward a doctor came by to look at me. I was crying, without making any sound. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't want to stop. “What's the matter with you, sonny?” he asked. “You haven't got anything to worry about. They'll make you another leg so good that nobody can tell it.”

  “I feel so grateful for being here,” I said. “You see, I was on the line for six months, and I expected to be killed every minute of that time. . . . I never expected to come out alive. And now to be here between clean sheets, with everybody so nice to me. . . . ” I tried to stop crying, but I couldn't. . . . “This isn't very dignified,” I said, “but I feel so happy, I'd like to go about licking people's hands . . . ”

  “All right,” said the doctor, patting my head. “You go to sleep now. You tell me all about it when I come around to-morrow morning.”

  CORPORAL LLOYD SOMERVILLE

  ALL the men in our ward were gas patients, and all of us were going to die. The nurses knew there was nothing that could be done for us, and most of the men realized it too. . . . Across the room, a man lay straining, and trying to breathe. Sweat rolled from his face and he caught his breath with a high, sucking sound. After each spell had passed he would lie back, exhausted, and make a bubbling noise with his lips, as if apologizing for disturbing the ward; because each time the man strained for his breath the other men unconsciously struggled with him; and when he lay back exhausted, we unclenched our fists, and relaxed a little ourselves. I thought, “That fellow reminds me of a broken-down soprano practicing her scales. . . . ”

  A man whose face was turning the color of wet cement leaned over his cot and began vomiting into a tin bucket. . . . Then the soprano tried again for a high note, and I knew that I couldn't stand it any longer. I beat the mattress with my fists, and my heart began racing, and I remembered the doctors had said my only chance lay in keeping calm and unexcited. . . .

 
The night nurse came over to me. She was fat and old, and she walked on the sides of her feet like a tame bear. There was a purple birth-mark on her chin. She stood looking down at me helplessly.

  “This is pretty amusing for you, isn't it?” I said. She didn't answer me, and I commenced laughing and crying and saying every filthy thing I had ever heard, but she bent over me quietly, and kissed me on the mouth. . . . “A big boy like you!” she said scornfully.—“Oh, I'd be ashamed: I really would!. . . . ” I took hold of her hand and held it tightly. I could feel my heart slowing down again. My toes uncurled and my legs began to relax. My legs were stiff and numb. They felt as if they had been beaten with a stick.

  And so she stood above my bed trying to think of something to do for me. I turned my head and pressed my lips against her palm. I wanted her to know that I was not frightened any more. I looked into her eyes steadily, and smiled, and she smiled back at me. . . . “I know what will help you,” she said, “and that's a good stiff shot of cognac.” I said yes, I thought so too.

  “You've drunk cognac before, haven't you?” she asked anxiously. “I don't want to be the one to give you your first drink. . . . ”

  PRIVATE LAWRENCE DICKSON

  EARLY in June we took over a position in Belleau Wood just evacuated by the Sixth Regiment, who had made an attack that morning. There was a lot of salvage around and a number of letters which had been torn up and thrown away. I pieced a part of one letter together and read it, but I could never find the last pages. It was addressed to a man named Francis R. Toleman and it was the most interesting letter I ever read. I carried it around with me for a long time hoping that some day I'd meet this fellow Toleman, but I never did.