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ONE MAN'S INITIATION--1917
BY
JOHN DOS PASSOS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1922
TO THOSE
WITH WHOM I SAW ROCKETS IN THE SKY A
CERTAIN EVENING AT SUNSET ON THE ROAD
FROM ERIZE-LA-PETITE TO ERIZE-LA-GRANDE.
Table of Contents
Chapter I 9
Chapter II 17
Chapter III 22
Chapter IV 31
Chapter V 49
Chapter VI 64
Chapter VII 85
Chapter VIII 107
Chapter IX 109
Chapter X 125
Chapter XI 127
One Man's Initiation--1917
CHAPTER I
In the huge shed of the wharf, piled with crates and baggage, broken by
gang-planks leading up to ships on either side, a band plays a tinselly
Hawaiian tune; people are dancing in and out among the piles of trunks
and boxes. There is a scattering of khaki uniforms, and many young men
stand in groups laughing and talking in voices pitched shrill with
excitement. In the brown light of the wharf, full of rows of yellow crates
and barrels and sacks, full of racket of cranes, among which winds
in and out the trivial lilt of the Hawaiian tune, there is a flutter
of gay dresses and coloured hats of women, and white handkerchiefs.
The booming reverberation of the ship's whistle drowns all other sound.
After it the noise of farewells rises shrill. White handkerchiefs are
agitated in the brown light of the shed. Ropes crack in pulleys as the
gang-planks are raised.
Again, at the pierhead, white handkerchiefs and cheering and a flutter
of coloured dresses. On the wharf building a flag spreads exultingly
against the azure afternoon sky.
Rosy yellow and drab purple, the buildings of New York slide together
into a pyramid above brown smudges of smoke standing out in the water,
linked to the land by the dark curves of the bridges.
In the fresh harbour wind comes now and then a salt-wafting breath off
the sea.
Martin Howe stands in the stern that trembles with the vibrating push
of the screw. A boy standing beside him turns and asks in a tremulous
voice, "This your first time across?"
"Yes.... Yours?"
"Yes.... I never used to think that at nineteen I'd be crossing the
Atlantic to go to a war in France." The boy caught himself up suddenly
and blushed. Then swallowing a lump in his throat he said, "It ought to
be time to eat."
"_God help Kaiser Bill!
O-o-o old Uncle Sam.
He's got the cavalry,
He's got the infantry
He's got the artillery;
And then by God we'll all go to Germany!
God help Kaiser Bill!_"
The iron covers are clamped on the smoking-room windows, for no lights
must show. So the air is dense with tobacco smoke and the reek of beer
and champagne. In one corner they are playing poker with their coats
off. All the chairs are full of sprawling young men who stamp their feet
to the time, and bang their fists down so that the bottles dance on the
tables.
"_God help Kaiser Bill._"
Sky and sea are opal grey. Martin is stretched on the deck in the bow of
the boat with an unopened book beside him. He has never been so happy in
his life. The future is nothing to him, the past is nothing to him. All
his life is effaced in the grey languor of the sea, in the soft surge of
the water about the ship's bow as she ploughs through the long swell,
eastward. The tepid moisture of the Gulf Stream makes his clothes feel
damp and his hair stick together into curls that straggle over his
forehead. There are porpoises about, lazily tumbling in the swell, and
flying-fish skim from one grey wave to another, and the bow rises and
falls gently in rhythm with the surging sing-song of the broken water.
Martin has been asleep. As through infinite mists of greyness he looks
back on the sharp hatreds and wringing desires of his life. Now a leaf
seems to have been turned and a new white page spread before him, clean
and unwritten on. At last things have come to pass.
And very faintly, like music heard across the water in the evening,
blurred into strange harmonies, his old watchwords echo a little in his
mind. Like the red flame of the sunset setting fire to opal sea and sky,
the old exaltation, the old flame that would consume to ashes all the
lies in the world, the trumpet-blast under which the walls of Jericho
would fall down, stirs and broods in the womb of his grey lassitude. The
bow rises and falls gently in rhythm with the surging sing-song of the
broken water, as the steamer ploughs through the long swell of the Gulf
Stream, eastward.
"See that guy, the feller with the straw hat; he lost five hundred
dollars at craps last night."
"Some stakes."
It is almost dark. Sea and sky are glowing claret colour, darkened to a
cold bluish-green to westward. In a corner of the deck a number of men
are crowded in a circle, while one shakes the dice in his hand with a
strange nervous quiver that ends in a snap of the fingers as the white
dice roll on the deck.
"Seven up."
From the smoking-room comes a sound of singing and glasses banged on
tables.
"_Oh, we're bound for the Hamburg show,
To see the elephant and the wild kangaroo,
An' we'll all stick together
In fair or foul weather,
For we're going to see the damn show through!_"
On the settee a sallow young man is shaking the ice in a whisky-and-soda
into a nervous tinkle as he talks:
"There's nothing they can do against this new gas.... It just corrodes
the lungs as if they were rotten in a dead body. In the hospitals they
just stand the poor devils up against a wall and let them die. They say
their skin turns green and that it takes from five to seven days to
die--five to seven days of slow choking."
* * * * *
"Oh, but I think it's so splendid of you"--she bared all her teeth,
white and regular as those in a dentist's show-case, in a smile as she
spoke--"to come over this way to help France."
"Perhaps it's only curiosity," muttered Martin.
"Oh no.... You're too modest.... What I mean is that it's so splendid to
have understood the issues.... That's how I feel. I just told dad I'd
have to come and do my bit, as the English say."
"What are you going to do?"
"Something in Paris. I don't know just what, but I'll certainly make
myself useful somehow." She beamed at him provocatively. "Oh, if only I
was a man, I'd have shouldered my gun the first day; indeed I would."
"But the issues were hardly ... defined then," ventured Martin.
"They didn't need to be. I hate those brutes. I've always hated the
Germans, their language, their country, everything about them. And now
that they've done such frightful things ..."
"I wonder if it's all true ..."
"True! Oh, of course it's all true; and lots more that it hasn't been
possible to print, that people have been ashamed to tell."
"They've gone pretty far," said Martin, laughing.
"If there are any left alive after the war they ought to be
chloroformed.... And really I don't think it's patriotic or humane to
take the atrocities so lightly.... But really, you must excuse me if you
think me rude; I do get so excited and wrought up when I think of those
frightful things.... I get quite beside myself; I'm sure you do too, in
your heart.... Any red-blooded person would."
"Only I doubt ..."
"But you're just playing into their hands if you do that.... Oh, dear,
I'm quite beside myself, just thinking of it." She raised a small gloved
hand to her pink cheek in a gesture of horror, and settled herself
comfortably in her deck chair. "Really, I oughtn't to talk about it. I
lose all self-control when I do. I hate them so it makes me quite
ill.... The curs! The Huns! Let me tell you just one story.... I know
it'll make your blood boil. It's absolutely authentic, too. I heard it
before I left New York from a girl who's really the best friend I have
on earth. She got it from a friend of hers who had got it directly from
a little Belgian girl, poor little thing, who was in the convent at the
time.... Oh, I don't see why they ever take any prisoners; I'd kill them
all like mad dogs."
"What's the story?"
"Oh, I can't tell it. It upsets me too much.... No, that's silly, I've
got to begin facing realities.... It was just when the Germans were
taking Bruges, the Uhlans broke into this convent.... But I think it was
in Louvain, not Bruges.... I have a wretched memory for names.... Well,
they broke in, and took all those poor defenceless little girls ..."
"There's the dinner-bell."
"Oh, so it is. I must run and dress. I'll have to tell you later...."
Through half-closed eyes, Martin watched the fluttering dress and the
backs of the neat little white shoes go jauntily down the deck.
* * * * *
The smoking-room again. Clink of glasses and chatter of confident
voices. Two men talking over their glasses.
"They tell me that Paris is some city."
"The most immoral place in the world, before the war. Why, there are
houses there where ..." his voice sank into a whisper. The other man
burst into loud guffaws.
"But the war's put an end to all that. They tell me that French people
are regenerated, positively regenerated."
"They say the lack of food's something awful, that you can't get a
square meal. They even eat horse."
"Did you hear what those fellows were saying about that new gas? Sounds
frightful, don't it? I don't care a thing about bullets, but that kind
o' gives me cold feet.... I don't give a damn about bullets, but that
gas ..."
"That's why so many shoot their friends when they're gassed...."
"Say, you two, how about a hand of poker?"
A champagne cork pops.
"Jiminy, don't spill it all over me."
"Where we goin', boys?"
"_Oh we're going to the Hamburg show
To see the elephant and the wild kangaroo,
And we'll all stick together
In fair or foul weather,
For we're going to see the damn show through!_"