Camp--, _October_--.
Dear Sister Lenore,--It's been long since I wrote you. I'm sorry,
dear. But I haven't just been in shape to write. Have been
transferred to a training-camp not far from New York. I don't like
it. The air is raw, penetrating, different from our high mountain
air in the West. So many gray, gloomy days! And wet--why you never
saw a rain in Washington! Fine bunch of boys, though. We get up in
the morning at 4:30. Sweep the streets of the camp! I'm glad to get
up and sweep, for I'm near frozen long before daylight. Yesterday I
peeled potatoes till my hands were cramped. Nine million spuds, I
guess! I'm wearing citizen's clothes--too thin, by gosh!--and
sleeping in a tent, on a canvas cot, with one blanket. Wouldn't care
a--(scoose me, sis)--I wouldn't mind if I had a real gun, and some
real fighting to look forward to. Some life, I don't think! But I
meant to tell you why I'm here.
You remember how I always took to cowboys. Well, I got chummy with a
big cow puncher from Montana. His name was Andersen. Isn't that
queer? His name same as mine except for the last e where I have o.
He's a Swede or Norwegian. True-blue American? Well, I should smile.
Like all cowboys! He's six feet four, broad as a door, with a flat
head of an Indian, and a huge, bulging chin. Not real handsome, but
say! he's one of the finest fellows that ever lived. We call him
Montana.
There were a lot of rough-necks in our outfit, and right away I got
in bad. You know I never was much on holding my temper. Anyway, I
got licked powerful fine, as dad would say, and I'd been all beaten
up but for Montana. That made us two fast friends, and sure some
enemies, you bet.
We had the tough luck to run into six of the rough-necks, just
outside of the little town, where they'd been drinking. I never
heard the name of one of that outfit. We weren't acquainted at all.
Strange how they changed my soldier career, right at the start! This
day, when we met them, they got fresh, and of course I had to start
something. I soaked that rough-neck, sis, and don't you forget it.
Well, it was a fight, sure. I got laid out--not knocked out, for I
could see--but I wasn't any help to pard Montana. It looked as if he
didn't need any. The rough-necks jumped him. Then, one after
another, he piled them up in the road. Just a swing--and down went
each one--cold. But the fellow I hit came to and, grabbing up a
pick-handle, with all his might he soaked Montana over the head.
What an awful crack! Montana went down, and there was blood
everywhere.
They took Montana to the hospital, sewed up his head. It wasn't long
before he seemed all right again, but he told me sometimes he felt
queer. Then they put us on a troop-train, with boys from California
and all over, and we came East. I haven't seen any of those other
Western boys, though, since we got here.
One day, without any warning, Montana keeled over, down and out.
Paralysis! They took him to a hospital in New York. No hope, the
doctors said, and he was getting worse all the time. But some New
York surgeon advised operation, anyway. So they opened that
healed-over place in his head, where the pick-handle hit--and what
do you think they found? A splinter off that pick-handle, stuck two
inches under his skull, in his brain! They took it out. Every day
they expected Montana to die. But he didn't. But he _will_ die. I
went over to see him. He's unconscious part of the time--crazy the
rest. No part of his right side moves! It broke me all up. Why
couldn't that soak he got have been on the Kaiser's head?
I tell you, Lenore, a fellow has his eye teeth cut in this getting
ready to go to war. It makes me sick. I enlisted to fight, not to be
chased into a climate that doesn't agree with me--not to sweep roads
and juggle a wooden gun. There are a lot of things, but say! I've
got to cut out that kind of talk.
I feel almost as far away from you all as if I were in China. But
I'm nearer France! I hope you're well and standing pat, Lenore.
Remember, you're dad's white hope. I was the black sheep, you know.
Tell him I don't regard my transfer as a disgrace. The officers
didn't and he needn't. Give my love to mother and the girls. Tell
them not to worry. Maybe the war will be over before--I'll write you
often now, so cheer up.
Your loving brother,
Jim.
Camp--, _October_--.
My Dearest Lenore,--If my writing is not very legible it is because
my hand shakes when I begin this sweet and sacred privilege of
writing to my promised wife. My other letter was short, and this is
the second in the weeks since I left you. What an endless time! You
must understand and forgive me for not writing oftener and for not
giving you definite address.
I did not want to be in the Western regiment, for reasons hard to
understand. I enlisted in New York and am trying hard to get into
the Rainbow Division, with some hope of success. There is nothing to
me in being a member of a crack regiment, but it seems that this one
will see action first of all American units. I don't want to be an
officer, either.
How will it be possible for me to write you as I want to--letters
that will be free of the plague of myself--letters that you can
treasure if I never come back? Sleeping and waking, I never forget
the wonderful truth of your love for me. It did not seem real when I
was with you, but, now that we are separated, I know that it is
real. Mostly my mind contains only two things--this constant memory
of you, and that other terrible thing of which I will not speak. All
else that I think or do seems to be mechanical.
The work, the training, is not difficult for me, though so many boys
find it desperately hard. You know I followed a plow, and that is
real toil. Right now I see the brown fallow hills and the great
squares of gold. But visions or thoughts of home are rare. That is
well, for they hurt like a stab. I cannot think now of a single
thing connected with my training here that I want to tell you. Yet
some things I must tell. For instance, we have different
instructors, and naturally some are more forcible than others. We
have one at whom the boys laugh. He tickles them. They like him. But
he is an ordeal for me. The reason is that in our first bayonet
practice, when we rushed and thrust a stuffed bag, he made us yell,
_"God damn you, German--die!"_ I don't imagine this to be general
practice in army exercises, but the fact is he started us that way.
I can't forget. When I begin to charge with a bayonet those words
leap silently, but terribly, to my lips. Think of this as reality,
Lenore--a sad and incomprehensible truth in 1917. All in me that is
spiritual, reasonable, all that was once hopeful, revolts at this
actuality and its meaning. But there is another side, that dark one,
which revels in anticipation. It is the cave-man in me, hiding by
night, waiting with a bludgeon to slay. I am beginning to be struck
by the gradual change in my comrades. I fancied that I alone had
suffered a retrogression. I have a deep consciousness of baseness
that is going to keep me aloof from them. I seem to be alone with my
own soul. Yet I seem to be abnormally keen to impressions. I feel
what is going on in the soldiers' minds, and it shocks me, set me
wondering, forces me to doubt myself. I keep saying it must be my
peculiar way of looking at things.
Lenore, I remember your appeal to me. Shall I ever forget your sweet
face--your sad eyes when you bade me hope in God?--I am trying, but
I do not see God yet. Perhaps that is because of my morbidness--my
limitations. Perhaps I will face him over there, when I go down into
the Valley of the Shadow. One thing, however, I do begin to see is
that there is a divinity in men. Slowly something divine is
revealing itself to me. To give up work, property, friends, sister,
mother, home, sweetheart, to sacrifice all and go out to fight for
country, for honor--that indeed is divine. It is beautiful. It
inspires a man and lifts his head. But, alas! if he is a thinking
man, when he comes in contact with the actual physical preparation
for war, he finds that the divinity was the hour of his sacrifice
and that, to become a good soldier, he must change, forget, grow
hard, strong, merciless, brutal, humorous, and callous, all of which
is to say base. I see boys who are tender-hearted, who love life,
who were born sufferers, who cannot inflict pain! How many silent
cries of protest, of wonder, of agony, must go up in the night over
this camp! The sum of them would be monstrous. The sound of them, if
voiced, would be a clarion blast to the world. It is sacrifice that
is divine, and not the making of an efficient soldier.
I shall write you endlessly. The action of writing relieves me. I
feel less burdened now. Sometimes I cannot bear the burden of all
this unintelligible consciousness. My mind is not large enough.
Sometimes I feel that I am going to be every soldier and every
enemy--each one in his strife or his drifting or his agony or his
death. But despite that feeling I seem alone in a horde. I make no
friends. I have no way to pass my leisure but writing. I can hardly
read at all. When off duty the boys amuse themselves in a hundred
ways--going to town, the theaters, and movies; chasing the girls
(especially that to judge by their talk); play; boxing; games; and I
am sorry to add, many of them gamble and drink. But I cannot do any
of these things. I cannot forget what I am here for. I cannot forget
that I am training to kill men. Never do I forget that soon I will
face death. What a terrible, strange, vague thrill that sends
shivering over me! Amusement and forgetfulness are past for Kurt
Dorn. I am concerned with my soul. I am fighting that black passion
which makes of me a sleepless watcher and thinker.
If this war only lets me live long enough to understand its meaning!
Perhaps that meaning will be the meaning of life, in which case I am
longing for the unattainable. But underneath it all must be a
colossal movement of evolution, of spiritual growth--or of
retrogression. Who knows? When I ask myself what I am going to fight
for, I answer--for my country, as a patriot--for my hate, as an
individual. My time is almost up. I go on duty. The rain is roaring
on the thin roof. How it rains in this East! Whole days and nights
it pours. I cannot help but think of my desert hills, always so
barren and yellow, with the dust-clouds whirling. One day of this
rain, useless and wasted here, would have saved the Bend crop of
wheat. Nature is almost as inscrutable as God.
Lenore, good-by for this time. Think of me, but not as lonely or
unhappy or uncomfortable out there in the cold, raw, black, wet
night. I will be neither. Some one--a spirit--will keep beside me as
I step the beat. I have put unhappiness behind me. And no rain or
mud or chill will ever feaze me.
Yours with love,
Kurt Dorn.
Camp--, _October_--.
Dear Sister Lenore,--After that little letter of yours I could do
nothing more than look up another pin like the one I sent Kathleen.
I inclose it. Hope you will wear it.
I'm very curious to see what your package contains. It hasn't
arrived yet. All the mail comes late. That makes the boys sore.
The weather hasn't been so wet lately as when I last wrote, but it's
colder. Believe me these tents are not steam-heated! But we grin and
try to look happy. It's not the most cheerful thing to hear the old
call in the morning and tumble out in the cold gray dawn. Say! I've
got two blankets now. _Two!_ Just time for mess, then we hike down
the road. I'm in for artillery now, I guess. The air service really
fascinated me, but you can't have what you want in this business.
_Saturday_.--This letter will be in sections. No use sending you a
little dab of news now and then. I'll write when I can, and mail
when the letter assumes real proportions. Your package arrived and I
was delighted. I think I slept better last night on your little
pillow than any night since we were called out. My pillow before was
your sleeveless jersey.
It's after three A.M. and I'm on guard--that is, battery guard, and
I have to be up from midnight to reveille, not on a post, but in my
tent, so that if any of my men (I'm a corporal now), whom I relieve
every two hours, get into trouble they can call me. Non-coms. go on
guard once in six days, so about every sixth night I get along with
no sleep.
We have been ordered to do away with all personal property except
shaving outfit and absolutely necessary articles. We can't keep a
foot-locker, trunk, valise, or even an ordinary soap-box in our
tents. Everything must be put in one barrack bag, a canvas sack just
like a laundry-bag.
Thank the girls for the silk handkerchief and candy they sent. I
sure have the sweetest sisters of any boy I know. I never
appreciated them when I had them. I'm learning bitter truths these
days. And tell mother I'll write her soon. Thank her for the pajamas
and the napkins. Tell her I'm sorry a soldier has no use for either.
This morning I did my washing of the past two weeks, and I was so
busy that I didn't hear the bugle blow, and thereby got on the
"black book." Which means that I won't get any time off soon.
Before I forget, Lenore, let me tell you that I've taken ten
thousand dollars' life insurance from the government, in your favor
as beneficiary. This costs me only about six and a half dollars per
month, and in case of my death--Well, I'm a soldier, now. Please
tell Rose I've taken a fifty-dollar Liberty Bond of the new issue
for her. This I'm paying at the rate of five dollars per month and
it will be delivered to her at the end of ten months. Both of these,
of course, I'm paying out of my government pay as a soldier. The
money dad sent me I spent like water, lent to the boys, threw away.
Tell him not to send me any more. Tell him the time has come for Jim
Anderson to make good. I've a rich dad and he's the best dad any
harum-scarum boy ever had. I'm going to prove more than one thing
this trip.
We hear so many rumors, and none of them ever come true. One of them
is funny--that we have so many rich men with political influence in
our regiment that we will never get to France! Isn't that the limit?
But it's funny because, if we have rich men, I'd like to see them.
Still, there are thirty thousand soldiers here, and in my neck of
the woods such rumors are laughed and cussed at. We hear also that
we're going to be ordered South. I wish that would come true. It's
so cold and drab and muddy and monotonous.
My friend Montana fooled everybody. He didn't die. He seems to be
hanging on. Lately he recovered consciousness. Told me he had no
feeling on his left side, except sometimes his hand itched, you
know, like prickly needles. But Montana will never be any good
again. That fine big cowboy! He's been one grand soldier. It sickens
me sometimes to think of the difference between what thrilled me
about this war game and what we get. Maybe, though--There goes my
call. I must close. Love to all.
Jim.
New York City, _October_--.
Dearest Lenore,--It seems about time that I had a letter from you.
I'm sure letters are on the way, but they do not come quickly. The
boys complain of the mail service. Isn't it strange that there is
not a soul to write me except you? Jeff, my farm-hand, will write me
whenever I write him, which I haven't done yet.
I'm on duty here in New York at an armory bazaar. It's certainly the
irony of fate. Why did the officer pick on me, I'd like to know? But
I've never complained of an order so far, and I'm standing it.
Several of us--and they chose the husky boys--have been sent over
here, for absolutely no purpose that I can see except to exhibit
ourselves in uniform. It's a woman's bazaar, to raise money for
war-relief work and so on. The hall is almost as large as that field
back of your house, and every night it is packed with people, mostly
young. My comrades are having fun out of it, but I feel like a fish
out of water.
Just the same, Lenore, I'm learning more every day. If I was not so
disgusted I'd think this was a wonderful opportunity. As it is, I
regard it only as an experience over which I have no control and
that interests me in spite of myself. New York is an awful
place--endless, narrow, torn-up streets crowded with hurrying
throngs, taxicabs, cars, and full of noise and dust. I am always
choked for air. And these streets reek. Where do the people come
from and where are they going? They look wild, as if they had to go
somewhere, but did not know where that was. I've no time or
inclination to see New York, though under happier circumstances I
think I'd like to.
People in the East seem strange to me. Still, as I never mingled
with many people in the West, I cannot say truly whether Eastern
people are different from Western people. But I think so. Anyway,
while I was in Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles I
did not think people were greatly concerned about the war. Denver
people appeared not to realize there was a war. But here in New York
everything is war. You can't escape it. You see that war will soon
obsess rich and poor, alien and neutral and belligerent, pacifist
and militarist. Since I wrote you last I've tried to read the
newspapers sent to us. It's hard to tell you which makes me the
sicker--the prattle of the pacifist or the mathematics of the
military experts. Both miss the spirit of men. Neither has any soul.
I think the German minds must all be mathematical.
But I want to write about the women and girls I see, here in New
York, in the camps and towns, on the trains, everywhere. Lenore, the
war has thrown them off their balance. I have seen and studied at
close hand women of all classes. Believe me, as the boys say, I have
thought more than twice whether or not I would tell you the stark
truth. But somehow I am impelled to. I have an overwhelming
conviction that all American girls and mothers should know what the
truth is. They will never be told, Lenore, and most would never
believe if they were told. And that is one thing wrong with people.
I believe every soldier, from the time he enlists until the war is
ended, should be kept away from women. This is a sweeping statement
and you must take into account the mind of him who makes it. But I
am not leaping at conclusions. The soldier boys have terrible peril
facing them long before they get to the trenches. Not all, or nearly
all, the soldiers are going to be vitally affected by the rottenness
of great cities or by the mushroom hotbeds of vice springing up near
the camps. These evils exist and are being opposed by military and
government, by police and Y.M.C.A., and good influence of good
people. But they will never wholly stamp it out.
Nor do I want to say much about the society women who are "rushing"
the officers. There may be one here and there with her heart in the
right place, but with most of them it must be, first, this something
about war that has unbalanced women; and secondly, a fad, a novelty,
a new sentimental stunt, a fashion set by some leader. Likewise I
want to say but little about the horde of common, street-chasing,
rattled-brained women and girls who lie in wait for soldiers at
every corner, so to speak. All these, to be sure, may be
unconsciously actuated by motives that do not appear on the surface;
and if this be true, their actions are less bold, less raw than they
look.
What I want to dwell upon is my impression of something strange,
unbalanced, incomprehensible, about the frank conduct of so many
well-educated, refined, and good women I see; and about the
eagerness, restlessness, the singular response of nice girls to
situations that are not natural.
To-night a handsome, stylishly gowned woman of about thirty came up
to me with a radiant smile and a strange brightness in her eyes.
There were five hundred couples dancing on the floor, and the music
and sound of sliding feet made it difficult to hear her. She said:
"You handsome soldier boy! Come dance with me?" I replied politely
that I did not dance. Then she took hold of me and said, "I'll teach
you." I saw a wedding-ring on the hand she laid on my arm. Then I
looked straight at her, "Madam, very soon I'll be learning the dance
of death over in France, and my mind's concerned with that." She
grew red with anger. She seemed amazed. And she snapped, "Well, you
_are_ a queer soldier!" Later I watched her flirting and dancing
with an officer.
Overtures and advances innumerable have been made to me, ranging
from the assured possession-taking onslaught like this woman's to
the slight, subtle something, felt more than seen, of a more complex
nature. And, Lenore, I blush to tell you this, but I've been mobbed
by girls. They have a thousand ways of letting a soldier _know!_ I
could not begin to tell them. But I do not actually realize what it
is that is conveyed, that I know; and I am positive the very large
majority of soldiers _misunderstand_. At night I listen to the talks
of my comrades, and, well--if the girls only heard! Many times I go
out of hearing, and when I cannot do that I refuse to hear.
Lenore, I am talking about nice girls now. I am merciless. There are
many girls like you--they seem like you, though none so pretty. I
mean, you know, there are certain manners and distinctions that at
once mark a really nice girl. For a month I've been thrown here and
there, so that it seems I've seen as many girls as soldiers. I have
been sent to different entertainments given for soldiers. At one
place a woman got up and invited the girls to ask the boys to dance.
At another a crowd of girls were lined up wearing different ribbons,
and the boys marched along until each one found the girl wearing a
ribbon to match the one he wore. That was his partner. It was
interesting to see the eager, mischievous, brooding eyes of these
girls as they watched and waited. Just as interesting was it to see
this boy's face when he found his partner was ugly, and that boy
swell with pride when he found he had picked a "winner." It was all
adventure for both boys and girls. But I saw more than that in it.
Whenever I could not avoid meeting a girl I tried to be agreeable
and to talk about war, and soldiers, and what was going on. I did
not dance, of course, and I imagine more than one girl found me a
"queer soldier."
It always has touched me, though, to see and feel the sweetness,
graciousness, sympathy, kindness, and that other indefinable
something, in the girls I have met. How they made me think of you,
Lenore! No doubt about their hearts, their loyalty, their
Americanism. Every soldier who goes to France can fight for some
girl! They make you feel that. I believe I have gone deeper than
most soldiers in considering what I will call war-relation of the
sexes. If it is normal, then underneath it all is a tremendous
inscrutable design of nature or God. If that be true, actually true,
then war must be inevitable and right! How horrible! My thoughts
confound me sometimes. Anyway, the point I want to make is this: I
heard an officer tell an irate father, whose two daughters had been
insulted by soldiers: "My dear sir, it is regrettable. These men
will be punished. But they are not greatly to blame, because so many
girls throw themselves at their heads. Your daughters did not, of
course, but they should not have come here." That illustrates the
fixed idea of the military, all through the ranks--_Women throw
themselves at soldiers!_ It is true that they do. But the idea is
false, nevertheless, because the mass of girls are misunderstood.
Misunderstood!--I can tell you why. Surely the mass of American
girls are nice, fine, sweet, wholesome. They are young. The news of
war liberates something in them that we can find no name for. But it
must be noble. A soldier! The very name, from childhood, is one to
make a girl thrill. What then the actual thing, the uniform,
invested somehow with chivalry and courage, the clean-cut athletic
young man, somber and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious
brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of
him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to
privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of
war, to blood and agony and death--in a word to fight, fight, fight
for women!... So through this beautiful emotion women lose their
balance and many are misunderstood. Those who would not and could
not be bold are susceptible to advances that in an ordinary time
would not affect them. War invests a soldier with a glamour. Love at
first sight, flirtations, rash intimacies, quick engagements,
immediate marriages. The soldier who is soon going away to fight and
perhaps to die strikes hard at the very heart of a girl. Either she
is not her real self then, or else she is suddenly transported to a
womanhood that is instinctive, elemental, universal for the future.
She feels what she does not know. She surrenders because there is an
imperative call to the depths of her nature. She sacrifices because
she is the inspiritor of the soldier, the reward for his loss, the
savior of the race. If women are the spoils of barbarous conquerors,
they are also the sinews, the strength, the soul of defenders.
And so, however you look at it, war means for women sacrifice,
disillusion, heartbreak, agony, doom. I feel that so powerfully that
I am overcome; I am sick at the gaiety and playing; I am full of
fear, wonder, admiration, and hopeless pity for them.
No man can tell what is going on in the souls of soldiers while
noble women are offering love and tenderness, throwing themselves
upon the altar of war, hoping blindly to send their great spirits
marching to the front. Perhaps the man who lives through the war
will feel the change in his soul if he cannot tell it. Day by day I
think I see a change in my comrades. As they grow physically
stronger they seem to grow spiritually lesser. But maybe that is
only my idea. I see evidences of fear, anger, sullenness, moodiness,
shame. I see a growing indifference to fatigue, toil, pain. As these
boys harden physically they harden mentally. Always, 'way off there
is the war, and that seems closely related to the near duty
here--what it takes to make a man. These fellows will measure men
differently after this experience with sacrifice, obedience, labor,
and pain. In that they will become great. But I do not think these
things stimulate a man's mind. Changes are going on in me, some of
which I am unable to define. For instance, physically I am much
bigger and stronger than I was. I weigh one hundred and eighty
pounds! As for my mind, something is always tugging at it. I feel
that it grows tired. It wants to forget. In spite of my will, all of
these keen desires of mine to know everything lag and fail often,
and I catch myself drifting. I see and feel and hear without
thinking. I am only an animal then. At these times sight of blood,
or a fight, or a plunging horse, or a broken leg--and these sights
are common--affects me little until I am quickened and think about
the meaning of it all. At such moments I have a revulsion of
feeling. With memory comes a revolt, and so on, until I am the
distressed, inquisitive, and morbid person I am now. I shudder at
what war will make me. Actual contact with earth, exploding guns,
fighting comrades, striking foes, will make brutes of us all. It is
wrong to shed another man's blood. If life was meant for that why do
we have progress? I cannot reconcile a God with all this horror. I
have misgivings about my mind. If I feel so acutely here in safety
and comfort, what shall I feel over there in peril and agony? I fear
I shall laugh at death. Oh, Lenore, consider that! To laugh in the
ghastly face of death! If I yield utterly to a fiendish joy of
bloody combat, then my mind will fail, and that in itself would be
evidence of God.
I do not read over my letters to you, I just write. Forgive me if
they are not happier. Every hour I think of you. At night I see your
face in the shadow of the tent wall. And I love you unutterably.
Faithfully,
Kurt Dorn.
Camp ----, _November_ --,
Dear Sister,--It's bad news I've got for you this time. Something
bids me tell you, though up to now I've kept unpleasant facts to
myself.
The weather has knocked me out. My cold came back, got worse and
worse. Three days ago I had a chill that lasted for fifteen minutes.
I shook like a leaf. It left me, and then I got a terrible pain in
my side. But I didn't give in, which I feel now was a mistake. I
stayed up till I dropped.
I'm here in the hospital. It's a long shed with three stoves, and a
lot of beds with other sick boys. My bed is far away from a stove.
The pain is bad yet, but duller, and I've fever. I'm pretty sick,
honey. Tell mother and dad, but not the girls. Give my love to all.
And don't worry. It'll all come right in the end. This beastly
climate's to blame.
_Later_,--It's night now. I was interrupted. I'll write a few more
lines. Hope you can read them. It's late and the wind is moaning
outside. It's so cold and dismal. The fellow in the bed next to me
is out of his head. Poor devil! He broke his knee, and they put off
the operation--too busy! So few doctors and so many patients! And
now he'll lose his leg. He's talking about home. Oh, Lenore! _Home!_
I never knew what home was--till now.
I'm worse to-night. But I'm always bad at night. Only, to-night I
feel strange. There's a weight on my chest, besides the pain. That
moan of wind makes me feel so lonely. There's no one here--and I'm
so cold. I've thought a lot about you girls and mother and dad. Tell
dad I made good.
Jim