He interrupted me before I could get any farther. I could see that he
wanted to change the subject. "Hmm. Store looks nice, Pete. But what
are you going to put in that big empty place?" He indicated the long,
bare strip where I intended to install my fountain when it arrived.
"Secret, Doctor Carpenter. Come in next week and see for yourself."
But he never did see it. Within a week, Carpenter closed up his big
house on the Heights, dismissed all the servants, recommended Doc
Turnbull to many of his patients, and enlisted in the army. Although
I enlisted shortly after, I never saw him again until a few weeks
ago--September 9, 1937 to be precise--in his handsome New York City
residence.
* * * * *
I bluntly admit that I am cowardly by nature; yet, despite this, I
was not drafted into the army. I volunteered. This is not a boast but
a statement of fact which, I presume, sounds paradoxical. But I have
met many like myself at the front who, listening to martial music and
the stirring speeches of wartime orators, could not resist rallying to
the colors. During many a night in muddy French dug-outs I wondered at
this rash act of mine. Volunteering had been so unlike me. At length it
dawned on me that I had done it to impress Anita.
This seems to me to be the most logical reason because I have always
tried to impress her. I would never have dreamed of confessing my
timidity to her and, if she were still alive, I would not be confessing
it here. I remember that whenever a situation arose which required
firm handling, in her presence I would handle it firmly--instead of the
meek attitude I took when there were no witnesses. I am referring now
to the incident of the iceman, shortly after we were married. The man
had gotten into an argument with Anita over a late delivery. The food
in our ice-chest had spoiled and the tongue-lashing the man received
provoked him. He began to shout back at her insolently. I forced myself
to step in and ordered the fellow from the house. Curiously enough, he
obeyed. As he stood hesitantly in the open door, I shouted: "Get out
of here and don't come back!" After he had closed the door, I added
ferociously for Anita's benefit: "... or I'll dust off the furniture
with you, you worm!"
All the eligible men in Ithaca were enlisting. Even students from up on
the hill and married men who were exempt. Although in my heart I knew
that I would make a poor soldier--being much more valuable at home,
keeping people fit--I was afraid that my reticence would be noticed.
I took to circling an entire block to avoid passing the enlistment
office on Seneca Street where a pretty town girl was drumming up
recruits. However, it did not matter so much what other people thought
of me, as long as Anita did not feel ashamed.
One day when I came home from work I thought I'd test her. I figured
that her face would give her away if she really thought me a coward. I
mentioned the fact that I contemplated joining up.
She did not throw her arms around my neck and beg me not to go as the
wives in plays did (and as I had hoped _she_ would do). She merely
nodded her approval and said: "Good idea, Peter. Uncle Sam needs
everyone. I've been thinking of joining the Red Cross. And don't worry
about the store," she went on quickly, "because that lame Murphy boy
has just graduated as a pharmacist. He can look after things until you
get back. The war can't last much longer now that we're in it."
I saw then that there was no getting out of it. I silently cursed
myself for having left myself wide open. "But how do you know that Tom
Murphy...?"
"Oh, don't worry, will you? He said he'd be only too glad to...." She
stopped in embarrassment. As my eyebrows went up in surprise, she
rushed on, "Oh, I knew you'd want to enlist sooner or later. So I
thought I'd sound him out before Ray Cavender thought of it."
The following day as I stood in line before the recruiting office she
waited to one side. I remember that she was smiling--not broadly, but
only with the corners of her mouth--as though something amused her. I
think that she might have suspected my meek spirit and half expected
that I would make a break and run for it before it was too late! Of
course, I did no such thing; although I don't mind admitting that I
would have liked to have done so--and probably would have, had I not
foreseen the disgrace resulting from such an act.
So I signed the enlistment papers with a great show of unconcern,
easily passed the physical examination, and rejoined Anita at the curb.
As we walked down Seneca toward North Albany where young Murphy lived,
my chest swelled with pride and my knees felt curiously weak.
"Well, Peter," smiled Anita, "you're in the army now."
"Yes," I replied.
A few days later I received orders assigning me to Camp Mills, out on
Long Island, for training. I was to leave immediately. At the station
many of the men were hoping that their wives would not cry. Something
told me that Anita would not; but I was not so sure about myself....
* * * * *
Anyway, late 1917 found me in France, a very bewildered apothecary
armed with a rifle in place of the familiar pestle. And a more peculiar
soldier never buttoned an ill-fitting uniform blouse over a quaking
heart. My quiet garden and the lake now were replaced by a filthy
trench, a sea of mud, tangled wire and the grim, ploughed furrows of
war.
I will not bore you by going into a long dissertation on the causes,
results and horrors of international strife. More capable persons
have tried it before me to no avail. To the young, the exempt or the
uninitiated, war seems an adventure, a thrilling episode during which
one has the rare opportunity of becoming a hero. If that is so, all I
can say is that it was a thrill and an adventure I would prefer not
having again. And I am certainly not alone in this.
Oh, yes, I can understand the quickening of the pulse whenever a
flag goes by and how handsome the boys look in their khaki and steel
helmets. But it is easy to feel heroic at home, far from the awful
front, surrounded by friends and pretty girls. I think that if recruits
were allowed one day of fighting before finally electing to join the
army, no country would be able to raise troops.
But this is not a war story; it is a confession, if you wish to call
it that, of what led me to commit the crime of which I am supposed
to be guilty, and the war plays no part in it with the exception of
two incidents. One of them is the shell-shock I suffered; the other I
relate here.
In my company were three men to whom I became very much attached. Two
of them--Carter and Mullins--were privates like myself. The third was
a huge fellow by the name of Wilkinson, my platoon sergeant. War and
the ever-present threat of death can forge close friendships, even
among people from different walks of life; but, I maintain, pinochle
can forge closer ones. We played through more than seven months of
front-line fire--the four of us--and it helped. At first I could not
keep my mind on the cards with the low rumble of the big guns and the
occasional screams of the German "minnies" in my ears; but when I saw
how unperturbed the others seemed, I felt ashamed to flinch and soon I
became almost as hardened to sounds as they were.
Strange how four men can get together and become friends with no
more in common than a ragged deck of cards! Carter, in peace time,
was a shoe salesman; Mullins, a landscape gardener; and Wilkinson, a
policeman on the Yonkers force. Only infrequently did they mention
their professions. Carter once delivered a long and obscene monologue
on the subject of his regulation shoes. "I think they put hobnails on
the inside, too!" he grumbled. Mullins once or twice commented briefly
on the ravished landscape; and Sergeant Wilkinson, or "Sarge" as we
called him, never felt at home with a Springfield. At those times when
we had to mount the firing-step, he would pop away with his treasured
police revolver. I would stand beside him, firing round after round,
hoping that I was not hitting anyone.
For war or no war, the world safe or unsafe for democracy, I could
not bring myself to want to kill anybody. Pointing a gun at a person
and pressing the trigger was still murder to my way of thinking. The
knowledge that I was legally entitled to do it did not seem to make the
slightest particle of difference. I did not hate anyone. Why should I
kill?
Perhaps this was not a very patriotic attitude to take. Maybe I should
have taken a certain pride in killing off my country's enemies. But I
couldn't help feeling that the enemy ranks contained many young men
like myself into whose unwilling hands guns had been thrust. My own
life, up until the war broke out, had been spent in trying to relieve
pain, not to inflict it. But when I broached this subject, the Sarge
sniffed. "Either you fill their bellies with lead or they fill yours.
Take your pick." I solved the problem by keeping carefully out of the
line of fire whenever possible and by trying to miss each shot it was
my military duty to fire.
One night in October, a second lieutenant came into our dug-out and
asked us to volunteer for a wire-cutting detail. "If you don't make too
much noise, there shouldn't be any trouble. The Boche are in Exermont,
drinking schnapps and eating pigs' knuckles and sauerkraut. I haven't
the foggiest notion why this wire must be cut unless we're going to
attack ... but orders are orders."