guns to clean, David began to get his gun out of the rack. He looked a
little uneasily at Knudsen, but the Swede wouldn't see it; he kept
squinting through his own piece. The regular, to make matters sure, said,
"Mr. Randall told me you'd give me your gun. I always clean his." With
the funniest little set of his jaw, as if he didn't quite know how to do
it, David reached for the cleaning rod. "Well," he said, "Mr. Randall is
mistaken. I clean my gun myself." Then he sat down beside Knudsen, as if
sure that the other would teach him--in which he was right. His dirty
hands at the end were a sad sight to him, and yet I think he was proud of
them too.
This morning Randall, who hasn't learned (and I question if he ever will)
how unwelcome he is in our tent, came in to brag a little--and of what!
There stands to the south of us a big hotel whose bulk is visible from
the camp, a strong temptation to all our luxurious budding Napoleons.
Randall was there last night, and came in to tell us what he had to eat.
Particularly he enjoyed, he said, the fresh asparagus tips. Pickle's envy
overcame his dislike, and he had nothing to say. But David's eye gleamed.
"Fresh asparagus tips?" he asked. "Scarcely that." "Indeed?" demanded
Randall. "I know asparagus when I eat it." "But not fresh asparagus,"
countered David. "It's not to be had in September. Canned tips, Randall,
that's all." And Pickle, in his relief, cackled aloud.
I have of late told you so little of our officers that I must say
something about them here, of officers as a class, and ours in
particular. We are at the stage of theoretical conferences--after the
regimental meeting each night on the drill-field is a company conference
at each company tent, where the non-coms are expected to go, and where
all others are invited. Consequently the captain or lieutenant has forty
men there each night, crowded close around the table and packed at the
open side of the tent. We are learning the theory of field skirmish work,
with a glance at the method of advancing by road into an enemy's country.
And I must say that our officers have at their tongues' ends the whole of
the principle that is embodied in that strange little book, the drill
regulations. As soon as you have got beyond the mere parade-ground work
(and that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region
where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack,
attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of
war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent
little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be
amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with
every possible amplification of its dry paragraphs. Get forward, always
get forward, is their intention. Make your fire effective, make it
destructive, make it overwhelming. With word, with blackboard plan and
section, with theory, with practical illustration, each night they lay
before us some new field of this really awful knowledge. We study it
eagerly. Two years ago I should have been horrified at these doctrines
that they preach. Today I regard knowledge of them, by a sufficient
number of able-bodied men, as the great need of the country.
So much, dear mother, of things which to speak of in detail would only
pain your kind heart. As to the men that teach us, I can say that they
improve upon acquaintance. Each of them, the captain and lieutenant, has
his own way of teaching. In the lieutenant a coolness of statement that
seems to imply a calm unshakableness, as of one who has measured all
risks and sees that they amount to nothing. In the captain equal
clearness but more fire. Both see that the only safety is in attack. They
answer our questions quite differently, the lieutenant with a crisp
completeness that leaves nothing to inquire but much to ponder on, the
captain with an illuminating phrase that humanizes everything and brings
instant understanding. Their men will go wherever they send them in a
fight, for the lieutenant because they know he must be right, for the
captain because they feel it.
We never, I think, can know the lieutenant very well, because of that
quality which I saw in him at his first appearance before us, an
aloofness that taunts us into the determination to please him. The
captain I am sure we know already, a worker, a driver, but one who shows
us that he understands our mistakes by the very keenness of his irony. "I
have found you men to place the hip anywhere between the armpit and the
knee. So I will place it for you at the watch pocket. That is your
official hip, gentlemen." "Yes, skirmishers in Europe are now wearing
steel helmets. But if you men don't better learn to keep under cover you
won't need steel helmets, you'll need battleships." "You can't take too
many precautions in the use of your guns. In this game with me out in
front, I'm an advocate of safety first."
The men like him, but more than that, they respect him. You know, mother,
that I can tell something at first hand about learning one's job. But
these officers put the average civilian to shame. I doubt if there is
stronger professional feeling, or a higher standard of professional
achievement, anywhere in the world. If all the other officers are like
our two, West Pointers are a formidable body of men.
DICK.
EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF VERA WADSWORTH
TO HER SISTER FRANCES
Sep. 6, 1916.
DEAR FRANCES:--
You can't imagine what a relief it is to be where there are no men. That
may seem to you a curious statement, for here there are practically no
women at all, and nothing but men in the landscape from morning till
night. But there are no men buzzing about. It was disgusting to me that
no sooner was my engagement to Dick broken than the rushing recommenced.
I am so glad to be where no one pays me any attention at all. The place
will be flooded in a few days with a thousand new rookies, but they will
be nothing else to me than trees or bushes, and I can still have peace.
There are ladies here whom I have met, and shall meet again. Only I feel
no interest in them just now, except that the two I am likeliest to see
most of are such as always rouse my pity, overburdened with the cares of
children and a social position on a small salary. And the money of one of
them has just stopped coming in because her husband, at the border,
allowed an emergency purchase which the auditing department at Washington
will not pass. You know that in such a case the officer's pay stops until
the deficiency is made up or the matter is explained. No one questions
his honesty, but his wife and children suffer. And a man will ask a woman
to take that risk with him!
The Colonel is the nicest old gentleman, very courteous. There is no
doubt that army officers have delightful manners; he begs my pardon every
time he lights his pipe. Cannot afford cigars, of course. And threadbare,
but very neat. But what is the use of courtesy and self-denial if you
believe in war, make war your business?
He and I have had it out already. Neither of us made the slightest
impression on the other. His argument is the old one: be prepared, and
people will let you alone. He cannot be made to see that if a man has a
gun, or a nation has an army, the temptation to use it will some day
become too strong.
I haven't given him my opinion of the army as a profession _for women_.
He always ends our discussion with a charming compliment. But I am aching
to point out to him the condition of the house we live in, where the new
has all come off of Dolly's wedding presents, the chair covers are
wearing out, holes are coming in the napkins, and there is no money for
replacements. How Dolly could pay for her trip to the border, or keep
herself there, I can't think. Suppose the children are sick!
Oh, my dear, I am so weary of genteel poverty! Why couldn't I have
married Dick? He worked so hard, and got himself such a fine position,
that we should have been so comfortable! And then we had to conclude that
we weren't made for each other. I do so regret it, and yet there was
nothing else possible. Perhaps I'm not made for marriage after all.
* * * * *
September 12th.
The town, as I told you, is flooded with recruits, of the amateur
variety. But our post is a little oasis all by itself, and except that
they come and drill on the parade ground, they do not come near us. Did I
tell you that out in front of the house, merely across a driveway, is
this great field where the training companies manoeuvre morning and
afternoon, and where they occasionally have regimental or battalion
drill? Luckily our small piazza is all grown over with vines, so that I
can sit outside for the air and yet not myself be seen. The old Colonel
watches it all with the keenest interest, tells me what they do and what
they fail to do, and I am even learning the meaning of a few military
terms. He approves of the way in which the new men learn, and is very
proud of what they are achieving. But it has got so with me that I pay no
more attention to the drilling men than to automobiles going by. And when
their hours are over the place is almost as deserted as before.
* * * * *
Sept. 13.
I am rather annoyed by the fact that now that the training camp is
settling into its routine, its officers--the unmarried ones--find time to
come calling on the Colonel. Of course the dear old man is delighted to
see them, and doesn't tell me that he has helped to spread the report
that an eligible young woman is staying with him. I wish he hadn't. For I
have found out that military men are twice as bad as civilians. They are
aggressive by nature, or they wouldn't have chosen the profession; they
are aggressive by education; three minutes after they are introduced they
begin a flirtation. There is a lieutenant Pendleton here for whom I am
sure I am the twenty-seventh, so skilful is he in his operations. I have
known him two days, and I expect him to propose tomorrow. There are three
others who are only a day, or at most two days, behind. You know them,
the dashing, fascinating kind.
Another officer, Lt. Pendleton's captain, named Kirby, I cannot quite
make out. He doesn't make love; he discusses tactics with the colonel.
Yet he comes quite regularly, and keeps me in sight. He seems grimmer,
more tenacious than the others; I'm glad he gives his time to the Colonel
rather than to me. His voice has a curious quality, a most unmilitary
gentleness. Pendleton, when he gets you in a corner, purrs to you alone;
yet you feel that he has claws. His voice rings on the parade ground; I'm
sure of it. I can't make out what Captain Kirby's would sound like. There
is a deceptive sympathy to it, deceptive because I feel in him much
purpose. When an army officer can't flirt he either likes his profession
too little or he likes it too much.
* * * * *
Sep. 14.
This morning, on our little porch, I was sitting sewing behind the vines
when Captain Kirby came marching his company onto the parade ground
before the house. And then I learned what his voice was like, my dear.
Not gentle at all; very deep, very strong, curiously resonant, as if he
were shouting through a trumpet. And how do you suppose he treated his
men, so many of whom are gentlemen, or older than he, or earning bigger
salaries. Like schoolboys! I first saw him when he was standing out in
front of them, holding in his hand, swinging by the strap, a rifle that
he must have taken from one of them. Said he: "When you're at route step,
I want you not to carry your guns like suit-cases. You aren't a gang of
porters. If I had the money I'd tip you all; but cut out this red-cap
stuff. And don't carry it _so_." He put it across his shoulders, pointing
right and left. "You'll put out the eye of the man on your right, and
bash the ear of the man on your left. Now remember, Nature is a great
provider. She has made shoulders specially for the carrying of rifles.
Carry your rifle on one shoulder or the other, or hang them by the straps
from one shoulder or the other. And by no other way." As if they had to
obey him in every little thing!
Then he worked them! Nothing satisfied him. At each mistake, a blast of
sarcasm. He spoke of the "accordion-pleated line." He gave a fling at a
lost corporal: "As soon as we recover our derelict flanking squad, now
about a hundred yards ahead." The men came slinking back. He withered one
individual. "That belt is on exactly right. Except that it's upside down
and inside out, it's exactly right." At whatever distance he went, I
could hear every word. And whenever the company came close, I could hear
the men in the ranks, murmur, murmur, murmur. You can't treat such men
so. Of course they're disgusted with him.
* * * * *
Sep. 15.
Such a humiliation today! And such a discovery! I suppose you didn't tell
me that Dick was here because you thought I'd prefer not to know it.
We're perfectly aware of each other's neighborhood now. This is the way
of it.
This afternoon, being tired of the continual drilling on the parade
ground, I slipped away before it could begin, and leaving the Colonel at
his nap, went walking out a gravel road that I've for some time wished to
explore. It took me along a rather desolate tract of scrub land, with
nothing ahead but the distant Adirondacks; so at last, seeing a little
hill to the left, I thought I'd try if I could see the lake from it, and
perhaps sit there awhile in quiet. I struck out across this piece of very
desolate country, with little bushes growing but no grass, not good for
pasture nor for anything but one purpose which I didn't then suspect.
Soon I found myself walking along a ditch which kept cutting me off from
the hill, a ditch in the driest of sandy land and as deep as my chin, all
shored up with cut poles, or sometimes with plank, or with bundles of
twigs, or with willow basket work. And then I saw it was a trench!
The Plattsburgers must have made it. It ran all about, experimentally. It
had here a shelter of sandbags, there a dugout, there a kitchen. It was
made in different ways to show how to use material, I suppose. Really it
was very clever. And then when I came too near it at one place, to study
it, the rotten wood gave way with me, and so as not to have to fall I was
forced to jump, right down into it. And there I was! When I tried to get
up at the half-broken place, I was overwhelmed by a shower of sand.
Everywhere else the walls were too high for me to climb out. So I took to
walking along it, and it twisted all around, with passages like a maze,
but nowhere a place to climb. At one corner I met a horrible great snake,
helpless down there too. But it went one way and I went the other, till I
came to a little niche with a cover overhead, and a loophole looking
along the waste of scrub. Outside a little sign said, "Machine-gun
emplacement." And there I stood looking out for a sign of help.
Then I heard Captain Kirby's voice, no one could mistake it, and I was
relieved till I understood what he was saying. "Less noise, men! You
couldn't creep up on a dead tree that way. It would hear you coming." The
horrible thing had all his hundred and fifty men there, and in a moment I
began to see them, little glimpses of olive-drab pushing through the
bushes. I heard his voice again: "By squads from the right!" then
corporals' voices, then the rushing of men, then more corporals and more
rushing. All the time, from nowhere that I could see, came a continual
clicking--the absurd creatures were pretending to fire on the trench
where I was standing. I began to get more glimpses of men running stooped
and throwing themselves flat, heard the captain's war-horn, and a little
further away the lieutenant's voice like a bugle.
For this sort of playing soldier I suppose it was really pretty well
done. I knew they were all the time coming nearer, but I couldn't get
anything but glimpses of them. And after a while I knew they were behind
a line of bushes some fifty yards away, where I heard their continuous
clicking; but they showed only an occasional hat. Then I heard the
captain's voice, "Front rank, simulate fix bayonets!" and in a moment,
full of sarcasm: "Don't draw that bayonet! I said _simulate_. Don't you
understand the English language?" The clicking kept up at only half rate,
and I saw a few rifle muzzles; then the rear rank pretended the same;
then I heard the order, "Prepare to charge!" And it was all dead silence.
There was nothing that I could do but peep through my loophole, and think
how silly it all was. I heard a roar from the captain, an outburst of
yells, the crash of the bushes, and--there was the captain coming like a
bull, and a long rank of men rising behind him and rolling on toward me
in a wave. Oh, Frances dear, there is something awful about brute force!
I felt the ground shake, the noise of the shouting seemed to burst my
ears, the faces in front of me were like those of angry demons. I'm
ashamed that their toy soldiering was so real to them that it [the word
_frightened_ evidently crossed out] was too much for me, and I turned
away and put my hands to my ears.
Then it was all over. I heard them crying "Halt!" and walked out into the
open trench, to see a line of men laughing and panting just above me.
Only a few saw me at first; the rest were saying "That was some charge!"
and similar self-praise. I said, "Will you please help me out?" The men
nearest me were very respectful. One leaped down beside me, laid down his
gun, and held his hands for me to step in, a blond man, a real soldier,
with flashing blue eyes. Half a dozen hands were held for me above, and
the captain came pushing in to help, with such an anxious face! But I
heard someone say, "Give me your hand, Vera!" and there was Dick! He and
the blond man had me out in a moment, and Dick took me through the line
and got me quickly away toward the road I had left. I sent him back, but
he would not leave me till he was sure I was all right. He was very
handsome, and grave, and respectful. And oh! wasn't it all stupid? I am
disgusted with the whole Tenth Training Regiment, but more disgusted with
myself.
EXTRACT FROM PRIVATE GODWIN'S DAILY LETTER,
OF THE SAME DATE
... The fellows' eyes popped as I took Vera through the line. She _is_ a
stunner! I saluted the captain when I went back, and he did not ask me to
explain why I took so much on myself, though the lieutenant, who came too
late, I think was furious with me. We yanked Knudsen out of the trench,
and the captain, forming us instantly, marched us away in the direction
that Vera didn't take. When he gave us rest she was clean out of sight,
and we lay down in the bushes and loafed for a while.
Nobody in the squad asked me a question. Young David's face was a study
in ignorance, but of course it was he who let the others know that I was
to be let alone. From his squad Randall began to throw remarks at me, but
Pickle turned on him very savagely. "Oh, yap, yap, yap!" Captain Kirby
when he went by looked at me very intently, and I looked straight back at
him. But I couldn't look at any of the other fellows. Curious that a man
feels so self-conscious. You women know how to pretend, but few of us
seem to manage it.
Yet I wasn't sorry it came about so. The squad stands together on
anything that happens to any one of us. I felt proud to belong to it.
When we marched back and had got to the main road again, the captain
disappeared; it was the lieutenant who got us to camp and dismissed us
there. I knew where the captain went when after this evening's mess I was
ordered to go to his tent. He was writing there, and turned round when I
_scratched_, which is a little way we have in the army, as there is no
way of knocking. I saluted.
"Oh, Mr. Godwin," said he, returning my salute. "Miss Wadsworth sends a
message. You're to come to see her this evening, after general
conference."
"I was planning to go to company conference, sir," said I.
I suppose she knew I would say that, for he was ready for me. "She made
it an order, Mr. Godwin," said he, very gravely.
"Very well, sir," said I, saluted again, and left him writing--or
pretending to. I suppose she's got him, like the rest of them.
When I called on Vera we were very proper, and very old-friendly, and
radically different in our ideas, as it seems destined for us to be. I
told her how much I liked the training, and she said how much she
disapproved of it, and so we passed the time. Once she insisted on
telling me all about what her sister Frances is doing now. Then officers
began to come in, and to chat with the old colonel in the next room, and
glance through the door at us, as if saying, "When is that dam rookie
going to go?" So I left. It was nearly time, anyway, for me to be tucked
up in bed like a good little boy, and leave the field to my betters.
DICK.
PRIVATE GODWIN'S DAILY LETTER
Saturday evening, Sept. 16.
At the company tent.
DEAR MOTHER:--
We have just come back from general conference, a nightly occurrence
except in bad weather. Tonight, because it was cold, the men went
grumbling and tardy, having put on sweaters under their blouses, and the
wise ones, on account of the recent rains, bringing something to sit on.
In default of anything better a legging will do, slipped off when we are
on the ground. Our speaker tonight told us of army law, too technical for
me to make it interesting to you. Some speakers have hard work in making
their subjects interesting to us, not that these are dull, but that the
speakers are. Said Corder to me after one such, "When I was a Sunday
School superintendent I let no one speak to the school that hadn't
something to say." Yet on the whole I am surprised how well the officers
can give us the gist of their subjects.
Our best speaker so far (excepting always the General, who has a way of
getting at us that explains his success) was a youngish doctor, who gave
us a plain talk concerning personal hygiene. When he spoke of
cleanliness, briefly referring to it as a matter of course, I thought of
a man whom I had seen on the beach that afternoon, Wednesday, looking at
his feet and exclaiming in disgust: "Look at them! And I washed them
Monday morning!" Some of our lads, who come here with expenses paid by
their employers, have a little to learn in this particular.
But to return to our doctor. He was very jocose, expressed himself in
perfectly decent men's slang, and kept us laughing _with_ him all the
time, while at the same time he drove home his advice. And yet it was
very striking how once, not disrespectfully, the men laughed _at_ him.
While speaking of our diet he said, "I advise you to eat freely of the
excellent fruit provided at the camp table." Now with us fruit, cooked or
raw, is almost lacking, and nothing exasperates me quite so much, when I
remember the wonderful apples that were just ripening at home, as to see
the small bruised insipid fruit that they serve us here. So the men began
to laugh, quietly at first; but the laughter rippled from one end of the
crowd to the other, and then rose in waves, and then boomed louder and
louder, in one great hearty roar. Whether or not the doctor saw the
point, it was worth taking.
Today we went on outpost duty, posting our squads at proper vantage
points along the further edge of our old familiar field, beyond the
trenches where Vera was trapped. The lieutenant took us out, explaining
as he went, dropping a squad on every-other rise of the ground, and
leaving its corporal to post his men. Soon we were strung out along half
a mile of rough country, a railroad in our front, and beyond it the
enemy's territory. Looking from our vantage-point it was hard to suppose
that the barren pasture was hiding all our men. Of them we saw but two,
an advance post lying on the hither side of the railroad embankment,
peering over the top, and our squad's own foremost man at his place where
he could command a railroad cut. The rest were hidden in little hollows,
in scattered clumps of pine, or in patches of scrub oak. After a while
along came the visiting patrol, directed by each squad onward to the
next, and so covering the whole front. And last came the captain,
inspecting each post, and when he was satisfied, sending us back with
orders to pick up the rest of our platoon and re-form by the trenches. An
incident of this short march. Randall, when we routed out Squad Six,
produced his last cigarette. His front rank man asked him for half. "No
one divides a cigarette," said Randall, borrowed a match from the man,
and lighted the cigarette himself. Our Lucy, after watching this in
silent amazement, took out his cigarette-box, found he had but one smoke,
and handed it over. Really, if he becomes a man Randall should have half
of the credit.