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WHAT OUTFIT, BUDDY?
[Illustration: SHE KISSED ME SMACK ON THE CHEEK AND SAID HER NAME WAS
LOUISE]
What Outfit Buddy?
BY
T. HOWARD KELLY
FORMERLY PRIVATE IN THE 26TH DIVISION A.E.F.
Illustrated
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
What Outfit Buddy?
Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1920
TO
PEG
CONTENTS
I. “What Outfit, Buddy?”
II. “Avey Vous de Chambre?”
III. “That Mule Was a Slacker”
IV. “Sunny France!”
V. We Was Off for the Front!
VI. American Joans of Arc
VII. The First Big Battle of the Guerre
VIII. “Guess I Didn’t Have the Guts”
IX. “The Old Van Seezeum on Its Way”
X. Château-Thierry
XI. A Craw de Guerre
XII. O. D. Meets Jimmy’s Gang
XIII. “We’re Goin’ to Take Metz”
XIV. “Well, We’re Here”
XV. Pinching Off the St.-Mihiel Salient
XVI. Beyond Verdun
XVII. “Finee! La Guerre Finee!”
ILLUSTRATIONS
She Kissed Me Smack on the Cheek and Said Her Name Was
Louise
“‘Take That Hat Off. It Isn’t Regulation,’ Says the Second
Looey to Me”
“Make Friends with the Cooties. Then You’re All Set”
“I Want to Get a Picture of O. D.’s Grave”
“A Bearded Poilu Came Tearing Out of a Ruined House, Waving
a Bottle Over His Head”
A great many impressionable young men who become soldiers overnight and
go to war feel strongly inspired to write books about their adventures.
I felt the same way before the newness of the life on the western front
had been rubbed away by constant friction with some of the more
monotonous things of war, such as hunger, cold, mud, cooties, and other
romance-destroying agents. I buried the idea of writing a book just
before my division was called upon to stand between the Boches and Paris
during the trying days of July and August of 1918. It is very good for
me that I detached myself from the desire to write a war book about that
time. Experience proved that it was necessary to give all my available
time to the business of fighting the _guerre_.
The book-bug never came my way again, for I do not look upon _What
Outfit, Buddy?_ as the result of answering some insistent, invisible
summons to write a war book. I did not intend writing a war book when I
started the first line of _What Outfit, Buddy?_ I merely hoped to let
Jimmy McGee, a real, regular fighting Yank who has seen his share of _la
guerre_, tell the story of the things that he encountered as a member of
the American Expeditionary Force. I sincerely trust that my original
intentions have carried.
If I have allowed Jimmy McGee to tell you his story, then I have
fulfilled my hopes, for I believe that Jimmy McGee’s story of the war is
merely the universal version of the great adventure as held by legions
of his comrades.
In my effort to let Jimmy tell his story I have not tried to use book
language. I have used to the best of my ability the speech of men who
became a real integral part of the _guerre_.... To do that it was
necessary to let Jimmy and his comrades speak French in the manner of
American soldiers. I tried to register the true value of their struggles
with the difficult French language by resorting to phonetic spelling in
the case of practically all French words which have become a part of the
American Expeditionary Forces’ vocabulary. Students of the beautiful,
musical language of France will, I trust, grant me this indulgence, as I
have taken the liberties only in the desire to tell America how its
fighting men overcame the difficulties presented by living side by side
with a people who spoke a foreign language.
T. Howard Kelly.
CHAPTER I—“WHAT OUTFIT, BUDDY?”
Jimmy McGee, hanging on to a long, lean loaf of brown bread with his
left hand and swinging a heavy, dangerous-looking cane in his right
grip, moved leisurely over a white road of France toward the
four-year-old battlelines that stretched between _Verdun_ and
_Saint-Mihiel_.
McGee, himself, was camouflaged beneath an assortment of things and
stuff that would have made Panhandle Pete of funny-paper fame look like
a smartly dressed gentleman in comparison. His make-up was not
calculated to allow observers much chance to criticize his own physical
attributes or failings.
A bit of reddish-brown hair managed to crop up in sundry places outside
the distorted corners of the clownish thing that had been issued him in
the name of an overseas cap. The part of his shirt collar that almost
swallowed his ears and chin came very near hiding his freckled snub
nose. But it didn’t. The nose insisted on protruding enough to be seen.
Jimmy’s eyes, alone, were open and ready for inspection. Any one might
have guessed the nationality of his ancestors by the laughing blue of
his eyes. What could be seen of his features hinted that he owned a
strong, good-looking face. Perhaps his long length of wide limb would
have given him some individuality among a gang of six-footers, for he
was exceptionally tall. Unfortunately his height was lost in the bulk of
war-like paraphernalia that jangled from countless straps, ropes, and
belts. Otherwise his identity was completely blanketed.
Nobody, except one of his own kind, would have ever recognized him as an
American soldier. He was a sad departure from all that Army regulations
and magazine covers had insisted upon as a typical member of the “best
dressed and best fed army” in the world. Most likely Jimmy’s own mother
would have passed him up as a straying peddler. Perhaps Sergeant George
Neil, McGee’s pal and bunkie, might have recognized him by the stout,
strong-muscled legs which were swathed in muddy war-putees,—that ended
in a final strip of thin raglings below his knees,—and moved in an
easy-going stride peculiar to his own ideas of speed.
However strange and disillusioning, Private, 1st Class, Jimmy McGee may
have appeared to the men who designed the uniform and equipment of
American soldiers, there was nothing about the boy to distinguish him
apart from thousands of comrades in soiled and torn olive-drab, who had
come out of the Chateau-Thierry rackett with their appreciation for
neatly made packs and dress-parade tactics all shot to hell.
Appearances had long since ceased to count in his young life. He had
forgotten all of the old O. D. stuff, after discovering that “squads
right” and saluting could never win a _guerre_. Consequently Jimmy
ambled along, loaded down to the hubs under a confusion of equipment and
souvenirs that he had collected from three fronts during the past eight
months, without a thought of anything, except the height of the hill
that he was climbing and the emptiness of his stomach. The fact that he
didn’t know just exactly where he was, or where his outfit might be,
wasn’t causing him any worries. He had been separated from the battery
too many times already and this latest separation was only twenty-four
hours old,—a mere trifle to Jimmy McGee.
“Lost—strayed—and stolen—Guess I’m all three of ’em—_tous ensemble_, as
the Frogs would rattle in that darn machine gun language of theirs,”
muttered McGee as he shifted the weight of a blanket roll that looked as
if it contained a Baby Grand piano and a fat-legged stool.
“Well, I’ll find the outfit before the _guerre encores_, anyhow. If I
don’t I’ll turn myself in for salvage—anythin’ to keep from bein’ an
M. P. or gettin’ in the Quartermaster Corps. Those guys don’t——”
Honk!... Honk!... Honk!...
Jimmy shut his mouth and got himself off of the road, just in time to
miss being pressed into an old-fashioned pancake under the wheels of a
truck that whizzed by like an Austrian 88.
“Great Gods! I’d rather promenade along the top of a trench in broad
daylight than leave my life in the hands of those fool truck-drivers.
They ain’t got a bit of respect for a man’s body—ought to let ’em drive
a tank across No Man’s Land under a barrage once or twice—maybe then
they’d quit tryin’ to kill us poor guys that’s fightin’ this _guerre_.”
McGee thought some pretty hard things about truck drivers in general
after getting that load off his chest and started to make another hill,
being careful to hang close to the side of the road.
“What outfit, Buddy?”
Jimmy McGee stopped still in his tracks, steadied himself against his
cane to keep from rolling back down the steep hill, and shook himself so
roughly before answering that the tinware, brass, steel and other
whatnots which were a part of his baggage made a noise like the cows
coming home.
“Twenty-Sixth Division, Jack,” he shot back, as if he were putting over
a little barrage all by himself.
Then he advanced cautiously to inspect the strange-looking person who
had asked him the old familiar question. For a passing moment Jimmy was
pretty sure that the old gas had got to his eyes at last, or that his
thoughts were getting the best of him. Surely the man who sat on the
grass and was all rigged up like the soldiers in the Sunday papers and
popular monthlies, must be a model—A sort of guide or index for his
kind, thought Jimmy.
At last, after what seemed ten years to the waiting, strange one, the
dust-sprinkled Yank said outloud, more to himself than anyone else,
“_Oui_—it moves and breathes—guess it’s real—take a chance, anyhow.”
Then to the object of his remarks: “What outfit, yourself, old man?”
“None—that is, so far,” was the astonishing answer, made in a voice that
hadn’t taken on the tone of confidence which Jimmy knew well could only
be found out where he and a bunch of his side-kickers had been living
during the past few months.
“Well—that’s a hell of a good outfit to belong to. Guess you ain’t
bothered with second lieutenants much then, eh?” queried Jimmy, pushing
his shapeless roll over his head and letting it fall to the earth with a
thud.
“How do you mean—worried?” asked the wondering man, whose appearance
brought back memories of the hated O. D. days to Jimmy.
“Oh, you never had many of ’em hangin’ around you for salutes, givin’
foolish commands that ought to be listed with dead letters in the office
at Washington. That’s what I’m gettin’ at.... Get me, now?”
A gas-mask, two bulging _musettes_, the bottom of a mess-kit, and a
French canteen were thrown to the ground. McGee’s great height began to
assert itself. He stretched his long arms and shook a case of
field-glasses and a German luger aloose from their insecure attachments
to his left shoulder straps.
“Yes, I see now. No, can’t say that I’ve minded them so much as I
haven’t been in the Army long,” replied Jimmy’s roadside find.
“So,” muttered Jimmy reflectively. “Say, when in hell did you enlist
anyway?”
“I didn’t—I was drafted,” answered O. D., as McGee had already mentally
nicknamed the man in front of him.
“_Oui_—_Oui_—I _compree_,” said the product of eight months in the mud
and rain of the Western Front, nodding his head affirmatively.
Silence for a moment and then Jimmy said what was on his mind.
“Say, how does it feel to be that way buddy? It don’t bother you at
nights does it?”
“Don’t quite understand you,” stammered the product of General Crowder’s
machine.
“_Pas compree_, eh? Just like a Frenchman when he don’t want to give you
what you want,” answered Jimmy. “Well I’ll try to shoot away the
camouflage this time. Don’t you ever wish that you’d enlisted?”
“Sure—I wanted to enlist when the war first started but my Dad had just
died and he didn’t leave much; not enough to pay his funeral expenses.
My mother has always been sickly and Mary hadn’t finished her
business-schooling yet. I had to work like the deuce to keep things
going— Then I was drafted.”
“That’s just the way with this damn army,” interrupted Jimmy
sympathetically. “They do everything like the French, backwards. Why the
devil couldn’t they have let you stay home and take care of your mother
and Mary? There’s enough of us big hams without any cares to fight this
war. Who is Mary, your sister?” asked Jimmy bluntly; but he meant to be
gentle.
“Yes, she is my sister; only nineteen. Two years younger than me,”
explained the drafted man.
“How’s Mary and your ma makin’ it now?” was Jimmy’s next question.
“Mary’s finished business school and has a good job. I make a
twenty-dollar allotment, and my mother gets twenty-five dollars from the
Government along with that. They’re doing pretty good now, so their
letters tell me,” was the frank response.
Jimmy sat down next to the recruit and started to hack off a couple of
slices of bread according to the French way of doing it. He gave him a
slice.
“Slap some of this _confiture_ on it,” pointing to a tin of jam. “You
won’t mind if I call you O. D., will you?”
“No; but what makes you want to call me that? My right name’s William G.
Preston.”
“Damn glad to know you, Bill,” said Jimmy, shooting out his right hand;
“but about this O. D. stuff?”
“What’s that gold stripe on your sleeve for?” gasped Bill. “Have you
been over here six months?” was the amazing question.
“_Oui_, but that’s a wound stripe on the right sleeve—this is the sleeve
for service chevrons,” and McGee exhibited two greasy and rumpled
service chevrons.
Bill gasped a second time. “Why, you’ve been here twelve months. You
must have come over on the first troop-ship. Where and how were you
wounded?”
The questions were coming too fast for Jimmy McGee. He reached for his
gas-mask and tin hat.
“Hold it a minute till I get my wind—all right. I’ve been here twelve
months—I’m sure o’ that. No, I didn’t come over on the first troop-ship.
I sailed over on the first mule-ship—one of those
twenty-three-day-at-sea-affairs. In those days we didn’t have separate
stalls for the mules and men. Everybody and everythin’ _cushayed_
together down in the hold—except the officers, of course.”
“I came over in eight days, and on a big liner— A mule-ship—uuggh!”
shuddered William G. Preston, soon to be regenerated under the name of
O. D. “But where did you get wounded, and how?”
“I got it in the calf of the leg—fragment from high explosive that the
Heinies were rainin’ down the night we staged a battle at
Seicheprey—first fight of the _guerre_ for the Americans, you know,”
asserted McGee, solemnly. “I only got a little tear in the muscle. Poor
old Gordon, my pal, he got his left shoulder and part of his head torn
off. He died quick, though; didn’t suffer much. They gave his folks the
D. S. C., as he did some big hero stuff. But that ain’t gettin’ Frank
much,” soliloquized the veteran of Seicheprey, reminiscently.
Jimmy saw that Preston was getting too interested and might ask for a
story about the war, so he directed traffic in another direction.
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you why I want to call you O. D.
Now, you see, we call anything that is regulation, red tape, and all
that kind of stuff, O. D.—just a sort of nickname. When I first saw you
I thought you was a soldier out of the drill-regulation book or a model
for some magazine artist. You see, you’re all made up accordin’ to the
blue-print. Carry your blankets just so; wear your cap at a right slant;
got your blouse buttoned up. Hell fire! you’re O. D.-lookin’, that’s
all. You’re the first of that kind I’ve seen in a mighty long time, so
I’m going to call you O. D.... From now on you’re O. D.... _Compree?_”
“Have it your way. What’s your name?” asked O. D.
“McGee. Jimmy, most of the gang calls me. Do the same.”
“All right, Jimmy.”
“You say you’re a replacement?”
“Yes. I arrived in Bar-le-Duc yesterday with a detail and got separated
from it. The A. P. M. told me to take this road and keep on going until
I located my regiment,” explained O. D.
“Got lost, myself, last night,” admitted Jimmy. “What outfit are you
goin’ to?”
“The One Hundred and Third Field Artillery. What division is that?”
O. D.’s question was drowned under Jimmy’s whoop.
“Well, I’m a son-of-a-gun! That’s my own outfit—Twenty-sixth, Yankee
Division, of course,” shouted McGee as he slapped O. D. across his
shoulders. “What the hell do you know about that! I’ll get you assigned
to my battery. Shake, old man, we’ll fight the rest of this _guerre_
together.”
Jimmy’s words, and the bread and jam that the Yankee Division V handed
out, did a lot to send the spirits of O. D. shooting up the ladder of
hope. Perhaps the war and the front wasn’t going to be so terrible,
after all he had read about it. Surely not, if it had a bunch of fellows
up there like Jimmy McGee, thought O. D.
“Gosh, I was hungry! This stuff is saving my life,” admitted O. D.,
gladly, as he left trailing evidence of the _confiture_ around the
corners of his lips. “Since I got lost from my detail last night I
haven’t had a thing to eat.... I can’t talk this French, so I was out of
luck for breakfast. I was just thinking about breaking into this
stuff”—and he showed his emergency rations of “corned willy” and
hardtack—“but the officer told me that I was not to touch them unless it
was a case of absolute emergency,” concluded O. D.
“_Bon—très-beans!_ Take his advice, boy: never touch that stuff unless
you are up against it mighty hard. Just a little of that embalmed mule
will kill any good man. Guess my stomach got used to it, as I’ve been
eatin’ it for damn near six months straight. I’ll get us a regular feed
when we hit a village to-night. Leave it to me.”
“Can you talk this lingo?” asked O. D., as if it were beyond
possibilities to juggle the language of the French around on an American
tongue.
“_Oui_, not _beaucoup_. _Cum see—cum saw_,” he replied, indicating a
very little bit by his hands. “But I can _parley_ enough to get a feed
and a place to _cushay_. You know _cushay_ means sleep and _monjay_
means eat. That’s about all you got to know. And _combien_—that’s how
much. They’ll tell you that _toot sweet_.”
“How the dickens do I get a drink of water?—I’m about dying of thirst.
Haven’t had a drop of water in three days, since we left the replacement
camp.”
“Oh, my God, man! You’re in the wrong place to get water. The French
don’t use that stuff at all. They think we’re nuts when we ask for water
to drink. You got to get used to that vinegar that they call _van blanc_
or _van rouge_. Here, take a swig of this stuff.” Jimmy unscrewed the
cork from his French canteen and offered it to O. D.
“What’s in it?”
“Oh, some of their old, rotten _van rouge_—red wine, you know. But it’s
better than nothin’.”
O. D. took a swallow, made a hard face and let a little more go down,
then he handed it back with the remark that it was sour.
“_Oui_, but _say la guerre_. Gotta get used to that stuff, I guess,” and
he nearly drained the canteen. “Smoke?” he asked, pulling out a package
of bruised Lucky Strikes.
“No, thanks.”
“You’ll get the habit after you’ve been up with us awhile. Nothin’ like
a cigarette, boy, in them damp dugouts when you’re waitin’ for some
party to come off.”
After the old blue smoke began to issue from his mouth and nostrils
Jimmy felt a bit talkative.
“So you goin’ to be an artilleryman, eh?”
“Yes; but the funny thing is that I’m an infantryman—that is, they
trained me in that kind of stuff. I never was on a horse in my life.
Never saw a real cannon, either,” answered O. D.
“Can that stuff. You don’t need to know anythin’ about ridin’ a horse in
this man’s army. I joined the artillery to keep from walkin’ and I’ve
been walkin’ most of the time since I enlisted. We never saw a cannon,
except those pea-shooters we had back in the States, until we hit
France. Just goes to show how this army’s bein’ run. They send you up to
the artillery and you were trained for infantry. Soon they’ll be sendin’
up submarine-chasers for caissons,” declared McGee.
“Say, Jimmy, wish you’d tell me something about the front, so I’ll know
how to act when I get there,” pleaded O. D.
“Ah, forget that front idea. You’ll never know the difference—unless, of
course, you get a fistfull of shrapnel in the face or a bellyful of gas.
Course, that makes it different.”
“Shrapnel! Gas! Gee, those are bad actors up there, I heard. Is it
raining shrapnel all the time, and does the gas come over every day, or
what?” asked O. D. kind of hopelessly.
“No, it ain’t nothin’ like that, O. D. There ain’t no flags flyin’ or
music playin’ when the boys go over the top, either. You’re liable to
get a down-pour of shrapnel, a shell-burst, or a bunch of gas any old
time. There’s no set rules for the way that stuff comes over—sorta like
goin’ to business every day after you get used to it. A man gets
accustomed to stayin’ up all night and jugglin’ ninety-five pound
shells, firin’ a piece, or rammin’ bayonets in Boche pigs. The hunger
and cold is about the worst thing. You’ll drift into the stuff easy
enough,” consoled the Yank.
“Some time, when you get a chance, will you tell me about some of your
experiences in the war?”
“_Oui_—when I get time, some day,” promised Jimmy. “Well, are you set
for another little hike? Guess it’s about three bells. We can make ’bout
seven kilometers before dark and we’ll look for a _chambre_—that’s a
room in French; then we’ll _monjay_ and _cushay_. It’ll never do to hit
a town after dark. You’re out of luck in this country to find a room or
anything once the sun goes down. They never make a light on account of
Boche planes. Might as well be in a barren desert as get into a French
town after nightfall.”
“I’m ready,” answered O. D., buckling up his harness and rising.
“It takes me quite a bit of time to get all of this junk on me,”
apologized McGee, as he began throwing _musettes_ over his shoulders and
buckling on belts and other stuff. O. D. gave him a hand and pretty soon
Jimmy McGee was once more arrayed in all the glory of a front-line
veteran.
“Guess we’ll hang onto this hunk of _du pan_. It’s mighty hard to get
bread in these French places,” said McGee, falling into the old stride
that he patronized when on the stem in France.