Company K (Library Alabama Classics) Read online

  At first I tried to prepare the rations as attractively as possible, but I soon found out nobody cared how the food was cooked. All they wanted was quantity, I mean, and positively hours before a meal was ready the men stood in line waiting hungrily and watching my every move. Of course it made me nervous and irritable! But the worst time of all was when we were dishing up the food; the men would stare at their rations and growl: not because of its quality, mind you (I could have understood and condoned that!), but merely because there wasn't more of it. (Heaven knows I couldn't cook any more food than Headquarters issued me: I'm not a magician, after all!) Then they would gobble it down like swine and get in line hoping for seconds.

  One day in Courcelles I was making a stew in a g.i. can, it was an hour before supper time but as I looked up I saw a line of men already forming. I became slightly hysterical, I'm afraid. I wanted to say to them, “Don't worry, little piglets, mamma pig will soon have supper ready!”

  On a shelf to one side of the kitchen were some medicines and salves which Mike Olmstead, the mess sergeant, carried around with him for emergencies. I had a sudden idea and it set me to giggling. I opened the lid of the g.i. can and stirred it all into the stew.

  When I was in bed that night, I thought, “Well, anyway, nobody will show up for breakfast and that will be a relief!” but when the guard woke me at five o'clock the next morning, the first thing I heard was somebody scraping his dirty mess-gear with a spoon. Then I heard men running and coughing and jostling for places in the line. When I came into the kitchen and started my fires, the line extended half a block. If there was anybody absent, you'd never be able to tell it with the naked eye.

  I turned and ran. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew that I must get away. I bumped into Sergeant Olmstead in the doorway. He saw that I was profoundly upset and nervous. I stood beating him on the chest. “Let me pass!” I demanded; “Captain Matlock can get another cook, because I'm through. They can put me in jail—they can shoot me, if they want to, but I'm through for good!”

  Sergeant Olmstead—he's really a good sort, but terribly dull—put his arm over my shoulder and stood patting my back. “Now, Cookie, don't get your bowels in an uproar,” he said soothingly.

  “Let me pass, please!” I said firmly.

  “You wouldn't leave me flat, that way, would you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He didn't try to detain me any longer. “Well, before you go, I want you to make some more of those apple turnovers. I never ate anything better in my life.”

  I looked at the man incredulously. “Did you think they were better than those peach pies I made for you in Saint Aignan?”

  Sergeant Olmstead thought it over carefully and then decided to be diplomatic. “They were both so good that it's mighty hard to say which was the best,” he said. I stood there uncertain and Sergeant Olmstead followed up his advantage. “How would the boys get along if they didn't have you to take care of them when they come back from the trenches?” he asked.

  I laughed derisively. “They would be delighted!” I said. “They all hate my cooking.”

  Sergeant Olmstead shook his head seriously. “Don't you ever believe that,” he said, “because you'll be wrong, if you do.” Then he continued, “I heard some of our boys boasting in the café that we fed better than any company in the regiment. They said they sure felt sorry for those other companies.”

  “Are you really telling me the truth?” I asked.

  “Sure. I'm telling it to you straight.”

  And because I'm a “dee” fool and haven't two brains to knock together, I let him exploit the better side of my nature, and I went back into the kitchen and started breakfast again.

  PRIVATE ALLAN METHOT

  MY poetry was beginning to attract attention when I enlisted, convinced of the beauty of war by the beauty of my own sonnets. Then months of training, drudgery and pain. But I could have stood the humiliation and the long hours of senseless work. I grew accustomed to those things and I could shake them off. It was the spiritual isolation that was unbearable.—Who was there to talk to? Who was there to understand me?—There was no one. . . . No one at all.

  That sense of strangeness, of being alone! It closed around me more and more. I looked at my comrades with their dull, sheeplike faces. They asked nothing of life except sleep and food, or a drunken night in a brothel. A sense of revulsion came over me. Sodden, emotionless creatures, insensitive to beauty . . .

  Then those nights on watch with Danny O'Leary, his eyes unlit by intelligence. He would stand there stupidly and stare at me, his heavy brows drawn together, his thick lips opened like an idiot's. I tried to talk to him, but it was useless. He lowered his eyes, as if ashamed of me, and stared at the duckboards, fumbling at his rifle. . . . “I wonder if we get paid when we get back this time?” he said.

  I began to laugh. I walked to the end of the trench and stood looking at a gas flare burning with a green light in the north.—That sense of isolation! That sense of being alone among aliens! I climbed out of the trench and walked toward the German lines. I walked slowly, watching the flares and whispering the words of my poems, pausing and walking forward again.

  “Soon a hand will stretch out and jerk me off my feet,” I thought, “and I shall lie broken against this broken earth. . . . Soon a foot, shaped like infinity, will step upon my frail skull, and crush it!”

  PRIVATE DANNY O'LEARY

  I WOULD like you to see me now, Allan Methot: I would like you to see what you have created!—For you did create me more completely than the drunken longshoreman from whose loins I once issued.

  I was so gross, so stupid; and then you came along.—How did you know? How could you look through layer upon layer until you saw the faint spark that was hidden in me? . . . Do you remember the nights on watch together when you recited Shelley and Wordsworth?—Your voice cadencing the words was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I wanted to speak to you, to tell you that I understood, to let you know your faith in me would not be wasted, but I dared not.—I could not think of you as a human being like myself, or the other men of the company. . . . I thought of you as some one so much finer than we that I would stand dumb in your presence, wishing that a German would jump into the trench to kill you, so that I might put my body between you and the bullet. . . . I would stand there fumbling my rifle, hoping that you would speak the beautiful lines forever. . . . “I will learn to read!” I thought. “When war is over, I will learn to read! . . . ”

  Where are you now, Allan? I want you to see me.—Your friendship was not wasted; your faith has been justified. . . . Where are you, great heart? . . . Why don't you answer me?

  PRIVATE JEREMIAH EASTON

  AFTER we had taken over our position, Captain Matlock sent me back to the cross-roads, a kilometer to the rear, to guide in the wagon train. The woods were filled with artillery and troops were moving up all along the line. “This is going to be something big,” I thought. “It's no little trench raid, this time!”

  Then, at dusk, the German planes came over and began bombing the roads and wood. They would swoop down suddenly and open up with machine guns and then dart up again out of range. At nine o'clock it was pitch dark, and at ten it began to rain. The rain fell in torrents and a cold wind swirled it about, but still the men came on, thousands and thousands of them. When it lightened I could see them distinctly, their heads lowered to the blinding rain, pushing forward slowly down the roads and through the woods, disappearing like giant snakes into the communication trenches that emptied into the line. . . . “This is really going to be something big,” I said. “No little penny fight this time.”

  Then toward morning the rain stopped and the first of the guns opened. Instantly a thousand guns were firing in a roaring, flashing semi-circle, and a thousand shells were flying through the air and exploding in the German lines. The barrage lasted for three hours and then, just at daybreak, it lifted. From where I was, I could see our men goi
ng over, the early light gleaming against fixed bayonets. But there was little for them to do, for there was nothing left of the German trenches or the surrounding terrain: Not a tree, not a blade of grass. Nothing living. Nothing at all. The dead lay thick in the trenches, in strange and twisted groups. . . . “There's nothing living left,” I thought; “nothing at all!”

  And then from a demolished pill-box a man crawled out of wreckage. His jaw was partially shot away, and hung down, but he held up the pendulous bone with his hand, when he saw us, and made a frightened, conciliatory sound.

  PRIVATE WILLIAM MULCAHEY

  WE crept toward the machine gun nest, each man with a grenade in his hand ready to throw, crawling slowly, hugging the earth, trying not to ripple the dense weeds. Then the Germans discovered us and opened fire, shouting excitedly.

  We jumped up from the ground and hurled our grenades and ran forward firing our rifles, our bayonets fixed for action. . . . Then something hit me squarely and I fell into the weeds again. Excited firing broke out all along the line. There were curses and shouts and then, a few minutes later, everything was quiet except Pete Stafford dragging himself back toward our line on his elbows and saying over and over: “My leg's broke!—My leg's broke! . . . ”

  I raised my head and tried to speak to Pete, but the ground tilted up and then began spinning around like a roulette wheel. I lay back in the weeds again.—“I'll never know how the war comes out,” I thought. “I'll never know, now, whether the Germans win or not.”

  SERGEANT JULIUS PELTON

  ON the afternoon of the fourth day we fell back to the edge of the wood and dug in, and the First Battalion passed over our heads and continued the attack. In front of us stretched a wheat field and a wrecked farmhouse, and beyond that the wood started again. The wood before us seemed intact and unhurt, but the wood in which we lay was littered with toppling trees and torn branches, still green. To our left was a gravel pit, long abandoned, with one narrow opening; and back of that a ravine ran straight for a hundred yards and stopped blindly against a bank of clay.

  From where I was lying I could see the gravel pit, with Johnny Citron on guard at the gap, watching the twenty-two prisoners we had taken that day. Then Captain Matlock came over to me. “What'll we do with them, sergeant?” he asked.

  “I don't know, sir,” I said.

  “The easiest thing would be to train a machine gun on the gravel pit,” he added; “that would be the simplest way.”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered, and laughed, not taking him seriously.

  “No,” he said after a minute's thought; “the gap is too narrow and the sides are dug in so it would be pretty hard for the gunners. . . . ”

  I seen then that he was not joking.

  “We'd better take them into the ravine and do it there,” he said. . . .

  I listened to what he was saying, keeping my mouth shut, but while he was talking I kept thinking: “I've been in the service since I was a kid eighteen years old. I've seen a lot of things that would turn an ordinary man's stomach. I guess I shouldn't be particular now. . . . But this is raw!—This is the rawest thing I ever heard of!”

  When Captain Matlock stopped talking, I saluted him. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You'd better take Corporal Foster and his automatic rifle squad. I think Foster is the right man to do it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said; “yes, sir; I think he is.”

  “You'd better tell Foster to get it over with before dark.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Later, when I was talking to Foster, I felt ashamed. . . . “Christ! but this is raw,” I thought. . . . “Christ! but this is the rawest thing I ever heard of!” . . . Then I remembered what my old drill sergeant had told me in boot camp, twenty years before. “Soldiers ain't supposed to think,” he said; “the theory is, if they could think, they wouldn't be soldiers. Soldiers are supposed to do what they are told, and leave thinking to their superior officers.”

  “Well,” I said to myself, “I guess it's none of my business. I guess I'm here to carry out instructions.” Then I walked to where Foster was and repeated Captain Matlock's orders.

  CORPORAL CLARENCE FOSTER

  “THAT'S an old trick,” I said. “I remember reading about it in the papers back home before I enlisted: The Germans send men over in droves, to give themselves up, and after a while there are more prisoners back of the line than soldiers. Then the Germans make an attack, which is a signal for the prisoners to overpower their guards and come up from the rear.—It's an old gag!” I said; “and it generally works. Those Prussians are smart babies, don't ever forget that!—They've pulled that trick on the French time and time again. . . . I'm surprised you never heard about it, sergeant,” I said.

  “I've heard a lot of hooey in my time,” he answered.

  “Well, this is straight dope,” I said. “I've seen it all written up in the newspapers.”

  “Do you believe all the tripe you read in newspapers?” asked Sergeant Pelton.

  “Well, I believe that!” I said; “I wouldn't put anything dirty past a German.”

  Sergeant Pelton began to laugh. “Captain Matlock said you were the right man for the job.”

  “I take his confidence in me as a compliment,” I answered. . . . “Christ almighty!—This is war! . . . What did you think it was? A Sunday-school picnic? . . . Take these Germans now.—Burning churches and dashing out the brains of innocent babies.—You've got to fight fire with fire,” I said. “This is the only sort of treatment a German can understand . . . ”

  Sergeant Pelton walked away. “All right. Be ready in half an hour,” he said. “Let's get it over quick.” Then I walked back to the trench where my squad was and told them Captain Matlock's orders. I realized a great many people, who did not understand the necessity for such an act, would censure Captain Matlock for shooting prisoners, but under the circumstances, there was no other way out. I expected an argument from Walt Drury and that sea-lawyer, Bill Nugent, and I got it. “Don't tell me,” I said; “if the arrangement don't suit you, tell your troubles to Captain Matlock!”

  “He wouldn't dare do a thing like that,” repeated Nugent; “not a dirty thing like that . . . ”

  “What do you birds think this is?” I asked. “This is war! . . . Why didn't you bring along your dolls and dishes to play with! . . . ”

  PRIVATE WALTER DRURY

  CORPORAL FOSTER told us to load our rifles and go to the gravel pit. There were some prisoners there, and Captain Matlock had ordered us to take them into the ravine, and shoot them. . . . “I won't do it!” I said.—“I might kill a man defending my own life, but to shoot a human being in cold blood . . . I won't do that!—I won't do it!” I said. . . .

  “You'll do what the Captain says or you'll get a courtmartial. Then they'll stand you up and shoot you too.—Maybe you'd like that!”

  “I won't do it!” I said.

  “All right,” said Corporal Foster. “Use your own judgment, but don't say I didn't warn you.”

  Then we took our rifles and walked to the gravel pit. There were about two dozen prisoners, mostly young boys with fine, yellow fuzz on their faces. They huddled together in the center of the pit, their eyes rolling nervously, and spoke to one another in soft, frightened voices, their necks bending forward, as if too frail to support the heavy helmets they wore. They looked sick and hungry. Their uniforms were threadbare and torn, and caked with mud, and their bare toes protruded through crevices in their boots. Some were already wounded and weak from loss of blood, and could hardly stand alone, swaying back and forth unsteadily.

  Then suddenly my own knees got weak. “No,” I said; “no.—I won't do it. . . . ” Corporal Foster was getting the prisoners lined up in single file, swearing angrily and waving his hands about. . . . “Why don't I refuse to do this?” I thought. “Why don't all of us refuse? If enough of us refuse, what can they do about it? . . . ” Then I saw the truth clearly: “We're prisoners too: We're all prisoners . .
. No!” I said. “I won't do it!”

  Then I threw my rifle away, turned and ran stumbling through the woods. I heard Corporal Foster calling to me to come back; I heard Dick Mundy and Bill Nugent shouting, but I ran on and on, dodging behind trees and falling into shell holes, hiding and trembling and then running forward again. Finally I came to an old barn and hid there behind a pile of refuse and tried to think of what I had done. I had no friends to shield me. I could not speak French. I didn't have a chance. I would be picked up by the military police sooner or later and tried as a deserter. That was inevitable, I knew. . . . “Better give myself up and get it over with,” I decided; “maybe I'll get off with twenty years.—Twenty years isn't such a long time.” I thought, “I'll only be forty-two, when I come out, and I can start life all over again. . . . ”

  PRIVATE CHARLES GORDON

  WHEN we got the prisoners lined up, and had started them out of the pit, Walt Drury made a funny noise, threw his rifle away and ran through the woods. . . . “Walt!” I called.—“Walt!”

  “Let him alone,” said Corporal Foster, “he'll get his later.”

  Then the prisoners came out of the pit stolidly with their heads lowered, neither looking to the right nor the left. The wood had been raked by artillery fire, but recently, and the leaves that clung to the shattered trees and the pendent branches were still green. In places the trunks of the trees had been scored by shrapnel, leaving strips of bark, gnawed-at and limp, dangling in the wind; leaving the whitish skin of the trees exposed, with sap draining slowly . . .

  “Come on,” said Foster. “Come on. Let's get going before dark.”