Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Page 6

  If he's alive to-day and reads this, I'd appreciate it if he would write and tell me if Jim and Milly ever made it up. I'd also like to know what in the world Alice Wilson did to make her own people turn against her that way.

  PRIVATE NATHAN MOUNTAIN

  WE could hear the motors droning above us, like a planing mill a long way off. Then there would be silence before the bomb came hissing down. At the first rush of the bomb, the column stopped in fright and the men braced themselves, hoping the aviator would miss the road that time. Then there would be a flash of light and an explosion, and we would walk around the shell hole, still smoking, and the dead men lying in it. The men would double time to catch up with the advance column, quarreling and jostling each other, carrying light packs only, their rifles slung over their shoulders.

  Then Mamie, the galley mule, went nuts. She kicked and jumped forward and brayed steadily with a rasping sound. When Pig Iron Riggin tried to quiet her, she flattened her ears and snapped at his hand, her eyes rolling wildly. Finally she freed herself from her harness and came kicking and screaming down the road, the broken trace chain rattling behind her. She kicked furiously in circles for a minute and then she leaped the road and ran through the woods.

  Afterward the planes, bolder now, came close to the road and sprayed us with machine guns. We could see the flash of the guns, and the red tracer bullets looked like fireflies against the sky. . . . We lay flat in the road, hugging it, striving to become a part of the earth, while the bullets splattered around us.

  “Old Mamie's having a spell of nerves,” shouted Albert Hays, laughingly.

  “Yes,” I said.

  At daybreak we reached Soissons and began the attack.

  PRIVATE CHRISTIAN GEILS

  “COME out of that shell hole!” said Sergeant Donohoe. “Come out.—Get going!”

  “No,” I said. “No.” My body was jerking like a man with Saint Vitus's dance. My hands were trembling and my teeth kept clicking together.

  “You bastard you!—You yellow bastard!” said Donohoe.

  He began to jab at me with the barrel of his rifle. “Come out of there!” he said again.

  “I'm not going any farther,” I said. “I can't stand it any longer.”

  “You yellow bastard!” he repeated.

  Lieutenant Fairbrother came up. “What's the matter here?” he asked.

  I crawled out of the shell hole and stood facing them. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't. I began to back away slowly. “Stand still!” said the lieutenant, but I continued to back away.

  “You yellow bastard!” said Sergeant Donohoe.

  Then he raised his pistol and took aim at my head.

  “Stand still!” said Lieutenant Fairbrother.

  I wanted to stand still.—I tried to stand still.—I kept saying to myself: “If I don't stand still he'll shoot me as sure as the world! . . . ” But I couldn't: I kept backing away. There was a silence for a moment. I could hear my teeth clicking together, playing a tune. “Stand still!” I said to myself. “Stand still, for Christ sake . . . he'll shoot you!” Then I turned and began to run, and at that instant I heard the crack of Sergeant Donohoe's pistol, and I fell in the mud, blood gushing out of my mouth.

  PRIVATE MARK MUMFORD

  WHEN Bernie Glass, Jakie Brauer and I jumped into the trench we didn't see anybody except a fat little German boy who was scared to death. He had been asleep in a dugout, and when we jumped down, with bayonets fixed, he ran out of the dugout and tried to climb over the side of the trench. Jakie caught him by the slack of the pants, and pulled him back and Bernie made a couple of passes at him with his bayonet, just to frighten him, and I'll say he did it! But when Jakie started talking to him in German, he calmed down a little.

  He begged us to let him go free, but we told him we couldn't do that, as we had to take him prisoner, according to instructions from Captain Matlock. Then he said he'd rather be killed outright than taken prisoner, because the Americans chopped off the hands and feet of all their prisoners. Did you ever hear anything as foolish as that in your life? When Jakie told us what he had said, Bernie got sore for a minute. “Ask him where he got his dope,” said Bernie. “Ask him who's been telling him such lies.”

  After Jakie had spoken to him again, he turned to us and repeated his answer in English: “He says they told him that in training camp. He says everybody knows it. It's even in the newspapers.”

  “Well, the dirty little louse,” said Bernie, “to say a thing like that when everybody knows it's the Germans, and not ourselves who do those things. Christ Almighty, that's what I call crust!”

  Then he began to laugh: “I'll tell you what: Let's have some fun with him. Tell him, regulations say that when a man takes a prisoner, he's got to cut his initials on the prisoner's belly with a trench knife!”

  “All right,” said Jakie, and began to laugh.

  When he got his face straight again, he told the German boy what Bernie had said, and I thought the boy was going to faint. He turned pale and lay with his cheek against the side of the trench, groaning. Then he unbuttoned his blouse and we saw that he was wearing a fine Gott Mit Uns belt. Jakie wanted it for a souvenir. He showed it to Bernie and told him he was going to take it, if one of us didn't want it, but Bernie said: “You can't do that: that would be stealing!”

  Jakie said, “All right, then, I'll buy the belt offen him.”

  So he told the German boy he wanted his belt, and that he'd give him ten francs for it.

  The German boy didn't answer him. I don't think he even heard Jakie, he was crying so and wringing his hands, thinking about how we were going to slice up his belly.

  “Go on and take it, then!” said Bernie; “take it, if you want it!”

  But when Jakie reached forward to unbuckle the belt, the little German boy screamed and cut his throat from ear to ear with a knife, which he had hidden under his tunic!

  PRIVATE BERNARD GLASS

  WHEN I saw Jakie Brauer fall, his arteries spouting blood against the side of the trench, like a chicken whose neck has been twisted off, I was so surprised that I stood like a fool while the German boy climbed over the side of the trench and started running. Then I came to myself and ran after him. I could have shot him easy, but that was too good for the bastard. . . . After the decent way we'd treated him: offering to buy his belt instead of taking it away from him, as we could have done without any trouble! He almost had me winded, but finally I caught him. I stuck my bayonet into him time after time. Then I hit him on the head with the butt of my rifle.

  It was a treacherous, dirty trick to cut Jakie's throat that way. Jakie was the straightest man I ever knew and he wouldn't hurt a fly, if he could get out of it.—And to see him with his head almost cut off, and his eyes . . . It all goes to show that you can't trust a German. I know I never gave one an even break after that.

  PRIVATE JOHN TOWNSEND

  I WAS gassed about dusk, too late to be sent back to the dressing station, so Lieutenant Bartelstone told me to go into the deep dugout and get some sleep. He said he would have me sent to the rear the first thing in the morning.

  Sometime in the night I was awakened by the sound of automatic rifles, and I heard shouting and cursing all down the line. I knew there was a raid coming off. I sat up and tried to open my eyes, but they had festered and stuck together. My chest felt tight and I was sick at my stomach. The firing increased and the shouting got nearer. I thought: “They're going to take these trenches! I'd better get out now, while I can!” I got up from the wire bunk and tried to grope my way out, but I kept stumbling over things and bumping my head; and at last I was so confused I didn't remember where the stairs were any more. I became frightened. I stood with my palms pressed against the wall and called softly: “Romano! . . . Halsey! . . . ” But even as I called I knew that I was alone in the dugout.

  There was shouting and firing directly over my head, and after that I heard running on the duckboards outside, and excited guttural wor
ds which I could not understand. The door of the dugout was opened and some one threw in a grenade. “Don't,” I said, “don't. . . . ”

  I found the stairs at last and commenced climbing them carefully on my hands and knees until I reached the top step, and felt cold air in my face. I stood upright and raised my hands to show that I was not armed. I could not see, but I had a feeling that many men stood in front of me. . . . “I'm blind and helpless,” I said; “please don't hurt me. . . . ” There was silence, while I stood there waiting, my hands raised above my head; and then somebody jabbed a bayonet through my body and somebody clubbed me with the butt of a rifle and I fell down the stairs and into the dugout again.

  PRIVATE WILBUR HALSEY

  THE head nurse told us it was all right to go anywhere else in town, but to keep away from the Rue Serpentine: If we went there our passes would be revoked, and we wouldn't get liberty again as long as we remained in the hospital.

  When we were outside in the sunshine, the first thing Herb Merriam said to me was: “Where the hell is this Rue Serpentine?” I laughed. “I don't know,” I said; “but let's go find it.”

  We looked around, but we couldn't locate it. Finally we crossed the canal and went into a little café. We ordered cognac. “Ask the waiter where it is,” said Herb Merriam. “Oh, I don't like to do that,” I said. “Go on!” said Herb. “Go on and ask him!”

  When the waiter came around again, I spoke to him in my best French: “Will you direct us, please, to the—”

  But the waiter didn't hear me out. “Walk four blocks east and turn to your right for the Rue Serpentine,” he said in a bored voice, without even raising his eyes from the table.

  Herb and I began to laugh. “Hurry up and finish your drink,” he said, “and let's get going.”

  We got back to the hospital an hour before supper time. Miss Mattson, the day nurse, was just going off duty. “Well, how did you boys like the Rue Serpentine?” she asked.

  Herb began to blush, and so did I, both of us looking down at our feet.

  “You better go downstairs and take a prophylactic,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Take the corridor to the right and knock on the first door.”

  PRIVATE HARRY WADDELL

  THIS is the way it really happened: We were lying in a wood near Boissy, having just returned from the front where we had been in the line for ten days. Most of the men got soap and washed their clothes that afternoon, or wrote letters home, but one or two of us decided to go A.W.O.L. and see what the country looked like.

  On the road, between two fields, I saw a girl watching a cow, brushing flies off its back with a willow stick. When she smiled at me, and made a sound with her mouth, I leaped the fence and came over to her. She looked at me, closing her eyes halfway, and laughed. Then she put her arms over her head and yawned, and as she did her breasts jumped at me like young rabbits. I walked over to her and put my hands on her thighs, and she came up to me with her hips and started to grind coffee. Then she pulled my head down against her breast, her eyes rolled back and we began to kiss. It was a hot day and her hair was plastered to her skull. Beads of perspiration were on her throat and lips and there was a smell of sweat and clover hay about her.

  Then suddenly she shoved me away like she was scared of something, and at the same moment I saw a man watching us over the hedge. The girl began to scream and hit me with the branch. I leaped the hedge and ran down the road, but the man came after me, shouting as he ran and waving a spade. Then other people joined in the chase, men and women armed with sticks and pitchforks. Finally they had me cornered in a pocket, and I stood still.

  That was the way it really happened. So help me, God.

  PRIVATE BENJAMIN HUNZINGER

  I DIDN'T have the faintest idea of deserting: Nothing was farther from my thoughts, that night. But you see I'd met a barmaid in a café that afternoon, while on liberty in the village, and she had promised to meet me later down by the canal. Sergeant Howie was with me when I made the date, and testified for me at the trial, but it didn't do much good.

  Well, after taps had sounded that night, I slipped out of camp and past the sentry on guard at the road. Annette (her name sounded something like that: I never did catch it exactly) was waiting for me, like she said she would. We walked arm in arm along the bank of the canal and sat down on the grass behind a thorn hedge in full bloom. I didn't know what to say, and she didn't know what to say, and neither would have understood the other, anyway. So we sat with our arms around each other, smelling the thorn flowers and listening to the canal swishing against reeds.

  Then a moon came up and we stretched out on the grass. Later, we rolled under the hedge, and she let me get at her. We lay in each other's arms all night, but just before daybreak we parted, I going back to my company, and she standing with her back to the hedge, waving.

  I cut across fields, hurrying to reach the bunk house before roll-call, but when I reached camp, my company was gone. I rolled my pack and hurried after them, trying to overtake them. When I did, ten days later, they were in action at St. Mihiel. My rifle was taken away and I was put under arrest, charged with desertion in face of the enemy. “You can't say that about me, by God!” I kept repeating. “I'm not a deserter. I didn't have any idea of deserting.”

  PRIVATE PLEZ YANCEY

  WE were due a quiet sector for a change, and I'll say we got one. Behind us was the town of Pont-a-Mousson, in front of us the Moselle flowed, and on the other side of the river the Germans were dug in. The night we took over the trenches, the French told us the club rules and asked us not to violate them: In the morning the Germans could come down to the stream to swim, wash clothes, or gather fruit from the trees on their side of the river. In the afternoon they had to disappear and we were free to swim in the river, play games, or eat plums on our side. It worked nicely.

  One morning the Germans left a note of apology telling us that we were going to be shelled that night at ten o'clock, and that the barrage would last for twenty minutes. Sure enough the barrage really came, but everybody had dropped back a thousand yards and turned in for the night, and no harm was done. We stayed there by the Moselle for twelve lovely days and then to our regret, we shoved on. But we had all learned one thing: If the common soldiers of each army could just get together by a river bank and talk things over calmly, no war could possibly last as long as a week.

  LIEUTENANT ARCHIBALD SMITH

  WHEN I entered the communication trench, I heard a pattering noise behind me, like somebody walking in his stocking feet. I turned quickly and Private Carter stood there, his rifle raised, with bayonet fixed, its point almost touching my breast. There was a strange, doped glitter in his eyes. His face was working and he made a piglike grunting noise in his throat. He pressed the bayonet against my belly and backed me to the wall of the trench. I looked about me, but there was nobody in sight; I listened with strained ears, but there was no sound on the duckboards.

  “What do you want, Carter?” I asked as quietly as I could.

  “You know!” he said. “You know you got it in for me!”

  I shook my head. “You're mistaken,” I answered. “You're very much mistaken, indeed, if you think that.”

  “Why don't you leave me alone?” he asked. “Why don't you take somebody else on patrol.—Why don't you let me go to sleep?”

  Suddenly he began to yawn and a tired look came into his eyes. He swayed back and forth on his feet. I started to lower my hands and grasp the rifle, but he recovered, pressing me warningly with the bayonet, and my hands went up again. . . . Suddenly the whole thing struck me as absurd. I began to laugh. “Don't you see,” I said, “I wanted to take you with me on patrol because I trust you, and consider you the best man in my platoon. That's all there is to it. I'm not trying to ride you. . . . ”

  He shook his head. “You got it in for me,” he repeated.

  “No!” I said. “No: you're wrong about that.—You're mistaken!”

  “I got to get some sleep
,” he said. “I'm tired. I got to get some sleep. . . . ”

  “All right,” I said. “Go back to the dugout and turn in. I'll see that you're not disturbed for twenty-four hours.—Go on back to the dugout and turn in, and we'll both forget this ever happened.”

  He shook his head again. His eyes blinked and almost closed. “You got it in for me,” he repeated, as if he were reading from a book. Then, without haste, he pressed on the butt of his rifle and the bayonet entered my body slowly. Then he withdrew the bayonet and struck me quickly again and again. I fell to the duckboards and lay there in the mud. Above me Carter stood cleaning the blade with blue clay which he dug from the side of the trench.

  PRIVATE EDWARD CARTER

  ON Sunday night I was on a wiring party with Sergeant Mooney. It was not my turn, but Lieutenant Smith said he wanted Mooney to take me along. Monday morning I caught galley police, finishing up just in time to go on patrol with Lieutenant Smith, who had asked for me again. Tuesday morning was my regular turn for guard duty, and Tuesday night I was gas sentry at the dugout. Early Wednesday morning a detail went to the rear to bring up rations, and Lieutenant Smith said I'd better go along because I knew the roads. I had just got back and closed my eyes when Sergeant Tietjen woke me up. “For Christ sake,” I said. “Get somebody else. I'm not the only man in this platoon. I haven't had any sleep for a week.”