It was morning.
Sergeant Kerfoot Harriman, bearing with proud satisfaction the learning
and culture he had acquired in the course of three years at a small
Middle-Western university, walked down the Rue de Dieu in a manner which
carried the suggestion that he had forgotten the belt of his breeches.
Approaching a white two-story stone building which age and an occasional
long-distance German shell had given an air of solemn decrepitude,
Sergeant Harriman unbent enough to shout stiltedly: “Mailo! Mailo-ho!”
His reiterated announcement was unnecessary. Already half-dressed
soldiers were rushing through the entrance of the building and toward the
approaching sergeant.
“All right, you men. If you can’t appear in uniform get off of the
company street.” Sergeant Harriman was commanding.
In their eagerness to hear the list of names called out the men forgot
even to grumble, but scrambled back through the doorway overflowing the
long hall off of which were six rooms, devoid of furniture, which had
been converted into barracks.
Sergeant Harriman, feeling the entire amount of pleasure to be had from
the added importance of distributing the mail—the first the platoon had
received in two months—cleared his throat, took a steadfast position and
gave his attention to the small bundle of letters which he held in his
hand.
He deftly riffled them twice without speaking. Then he separated the
letters belonging to the non-commissioned officers, the corporals, and
sergeants from those addressed to the privates. The non-commissioned
officers received their letters first.
At last:
“Private Hicks,” he read off.
“Here, here I am. Back here.” Private Hicks was all aflutter. Separated
from the letter by a crowd of men, he stood on tiptoe and reached his arm
far over the shoulder of the man in front of him.
“Pass it back to him? Pass it back to him?” voices impatiently asked.
“No!” Sergeant Harriman was a commander, every inch of him. “Come up and
get it, Hicks.”
“Hey, snap out of it, will ya! Call off the rest of the names.”
A path was made, and Hicks finally received the letter.
Harriman looked up. “If you men don’t shut up, you will never get your
mail!”
“Private Pugh!”
“Hee-ah. Gimme that lettah. That’s f’m mah sweet mammah.” Pugh wormed his
small, skinny body through the men, fretfully calling at those who did
not make way quickly enough. He grasped the letter. Then he started back,
putting the letter in his pocket unopened.
“Poor old Pugh. Gets a letter and he can’t read.”
“Ain’t that a waste of stationery?”
“Why don’t you ask the captain to write an’ tell your folks not to send
you any more mail? Look at all the trouble you cause these mail clerks.”
Several men offered to read the letter to Pugh, but he did not answer.
An hour later the first sergeant was walking up and down in front of the
billets, blowing his whistle. Bugle-calls were taboo.
“Shake it up, you men. Don’t you know you’re supposed to be ready for
drill at nine o’clock?”
“Drill! I thought we come up here to fight,” voices grumbled, muttering
obscene phrases directed at General Pershing, the company commander, and
the first sergeant.
Men scurried out of their billets, struggling to get on their packs and
to fall in line before the roll was called.
“Fall in!” the little sergeant shouted, standing before the platoon.
“Right dress!” he commanded sharply and ran to the right of the platoon,
from where he told one man to draw in his waist and another to move his
feet, and so on, until he was satisfied that the line was reasonably
straight. “Steady, front!” And in a very military manner he placed
himself in the proper place before the company and began to call the roll.
“All present or accounted for, sir,” he reported to the captain, a note
of pride and of a great deed nobly done ringing in his voice.
The sergeants fell back in rear of the platoons and the commander ordered
“squads right.” The hobnailed boots of the men on the cobblestones echoed
hollowly down the street.
Stupid-looking old Frenchmen, a few thick-waisted women, and a
scattering of ragged children dully watched the company march down the
street. For the most part they were living in the advance area because
they had no other place to go and because they feared to leave the only
homes that they had ever known.
The platoon marched out of the town along a gravel road and into a green,
evenly plotted field, where they were deployed and where, to their
surprise, a number of sacks, filled with straw, had been hung from a row
of scaffolding.
The platoon faced the sacks, were manœuvred so that each man would be
standing in front of one of the dummies and were ordered to fix bayonets.
Sergeant Harriman, the nostrils of his stubby nose flaring wide with
zeal, began his instructions.
“All right, you men. Now you want to forget that these are sacks of
straw. They are not at all. They are dirty Huns—Huns that raped the
Belgians, Huns that would have come over to the good old U. S. A. and
raped our women if we hadn’t got into the war. Now, men, I want to see
some action, I want to see some hate when you stick these dirty Huns. I
want to see how hard you can _grunt_.”
“All ready now. Straight thrust. One, two, three—now——”
As a body the platoon lunged their bayonets into the cloth-covered straw.
“Great God! Is that all the pep you’ve got? Why, you men are stale. What
the hell did you come over here to fight for? Did you ever hear that you
were supposed to be saving the world for democracy? Now, try it again,
and put some punch in it this time. Let’s hear your _grunt_.”
The action was repeated. “Rotten!” yelled the sergeant. “What the hell
are you going to do when you get up to the front? Do you think this is an
afternoon tea? You act like a bunch of ribbon-counter clerks, and that’s
what I believe most of you are. Now let’s try the butt stroke.”
“Butt stroke. One—two—three. Oh, hell. Where are you aiming, Gillespie?
Remember, you’ve missed him with the bayonet and you’re trying to soak
him in the crotch—in the _crotch_, mind you, with the butt of your rifle.”
Several of the men caught the frenzy of the sergeant, and at each command
they ran, gritting and grinding their teeth, and grunted at the pieces
of straw. From the terrific onslaught one of the dummies was severed from
the scaffold, and the sergeant cried out:
“That’s the first real spirit I’ve seen to-day. That’s the way to kill
them!” he called to the man who had wrested the dummy from its place.
“Come up here and show these dopes how to kill.”
Exultant, the man left his place and strutted over to the sergeant.
Taking a position before one of the dummies, he proceeded to show the
rest of the platoon how really and frightfully to stab the dummies until
their stuffing broke through the sacks.
“He’s working to be a corporal, the dirty scut. And oh, if he does get to
be a two-striper won’t he make us step around. Boy!” Hicks muttered to
Pugh, who was standing next to him and whose bayonet had failed even to
pierce the covering of the sack.
“He won’t pull none of that old stuff on me. Ah’ll tell Lieutenant
Bedford and he’ll make him be good or I won’t give him any more money to
gamble with,” Pugh drawled.
“You sure have got a stand-in with Bedford, Pugh. I often wondered how
you did it.”
“Hell, that’s easy. When he was down at St. Nazaire I lent him ’bout a
thousand francs to gamble with, and he ain’t never paid me.”
The platoon assembled and marched back to their billets.