Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos (books to read fiction txt) 📗

floor. The men huddled in the corners of the car, curled up together like puppies in a box. It was pitch black. Fuselli lay half asleep, his head full of curious fragmentary dreams, feeling through his sleep the aching cold and the unending clattering rumble of the wheels and the bodies and arms and legs muffled in coats and blankets pressing against him. He woke up with a start. His teeth were chattering. The clanking rumble of wheels seemed to be in his head. His head was being dragged along, bumping over cold iron rails. Someone lighted a match. The freight car’s black swaying walls, the packs piled in the center, the bodies heaped in the corners where, out of khaki masses here and there gleamed an occasional white face or a pair of eyes—all showed clear for a moment and then vanished again in the utter blackness. Fuselli pillowed his head in the crook of someone’s arm and tried to go to sleep, but the scraping rumble of wheels over rails was too loud; he stayed with open eyes staring into the blackness, trying to draw his body away from the blast of cold air that blew up through a crack in the floor.

When the first greyness began filtering into the car, they all stood up and stamped and pounded each other and wrestled to get warm.

When it was nearly light, the train stopped and they opened the sliding doors. They were in a station, a foreign-looking station where the walls were plastered with unfamiliar advertisements. “V-E-R-S-A-I-L-L-E-S”; Fuselli spelt out the name.

“Versales,” said Eisenstein. “That’s where the kings of France used to live.”

The train started moving again slowly. On the platform stood the top sergeant.

“How d’ye sleep,” he shouted as the car passed him. “Say, Fuselli, better start some grub going.”

“All right, Sarge,” said Fuselli.

The sergeant ran back to the front of the car and climbed on. With a delicious feeling of leadership, Fuselli divided up the bread and the cans of bully beef and the cheese. Then he sat on his pack eating dry bread and unsavoury beef, whistling joyfully, while the train rumbled and clattered along through a strange, misty-green countryside,—whistling joyfully because he was going to the front, where there would be glory and excitement, whistling joyfully because he felt he was getting along in the world.

 

It was noon. A pallid little sun like a toy balloon hung low in the reddish-grey sky. The train had stopped on a siding in the middle of a russet plain. Yellow poplars, faint as mist, rose slender against the sky along a black shining stream that swirled beside the track. In the distance a steeple and a few red roofs were etched faintly in the greyness.

The men stood about balancing first on one foot and then on the other, stamping to get warm. On the other side of the river an old man with an oxcart had stopped and was looking sadly at the train.

“Say, where’s the front?” somebody shouted to him.

Everybody took up the cry; “Say, where’s the front?”

The old man waved his hand, shook his head and shouted to the oxen. The oxen took up again their quiet processional gait and the old man walked ahead of them, his eyes on the ground.

“Say, ain’t the frogs dumb?”

“Say, Dan,” said Bill Grey, strolling away from a group of men he had been talking to. “These guys say we are going to the Third Army.”

“Say, fellers,” shouted Fuselli. “They say we’re going to the Third Army.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the Oregon forest,” ventured somebody.

“That’s at the front, ain’t it?”

At that moment the lieutenant strode by. A long khaki muffler was thrown carelessly round his neck and hung down his back.

“Look here, men,” he said severely, “the orders are to stay in the cars.”

The men slunk back into the cars sullenly.

A hospital train passed, clanking slowly over the cross-tracks. Fuselli looked fixedly at the dark enigmatic windows, at the red crosses, at the orderlies in white who leaned out of the doors, waving their hands. Somebody noticed that there were scars on the new green paint of the last car.

“The Huns have been shooting at it.”

“D’ye hear that? The Huns tried to shoot up that hospital train.”

Fuselli remembered the pamphlet “German Atrocities” he had read one night in the Y. M. C. A. His mind became suddenly filled with pictures of children with their arms cut off, of babies spitted on bayonets, of women strapped on tables and violated by soldier after soldier. He thought of Mabe. He wished he were in a combatant service; he wanted to fight, fight. He pictured himself shooting dozens of men in green uniforms, and he thought of Mabe reading about it in the papers. He’d have to try to get into a combatant service. No, he couldn’t stay in the medics.

The train had started again. Misty russet fields slipped by and dark clumps of trees that gyrated slowly waving branches of yellow and brown leaves and patches of black lacework against the reddish-grey sky. Fuselli was thinking of the good chance he had of getting to be corporal.

 

At night. A dim-lighted station platform. The company waited in two lines, each man sitting on his pack. On the opposite platform crowds of little men in blue with mustaches and long, soiled overcoats that reached almost to their feet were shouting and singing. Fuselli watched them with a faint disgust.

“Gee, they got funny lookin’ helmets, ain’t they?”

“They’re the best fighters in the world,” said Eisenstein, “not that that’s sayin’ much about a man.”

“Say, that’s an M. P.,” said Bill Grey, catching Fuselli’s arm. “Let’s go ask him how near the front we are. I thought I heard guns a minute ago.”

“Did you? I guess we’re in for it now,” said Fuselli. “Say, buddy, how near the front are we?” they spoke together excitedly.

“The front?” said the M. P., who was a red-faced Irishman with a crushed nose. “You’re ‘way back in the middle of France.” The M. P. spat disgustedly. “You fellers ain’t never goin’ to the front, don’t you worry.”

“Hell!” said Fuselli.

“I’ll be goddamned if I don’t get there somehow,” said Bill Grey, squaring his jaw.

A fine rain was falling on the unprotected platform. On the other side the little men in blue were singing a song Fuselli could not understand, drinking out of their ungainly-looking canteens.

Fuselli announced the news to the company. Everybody clustered round him cursing. But the faint sense of importance it gave him did not compensate for the feeling he had of being lost in the machine, of being as helpless as a sheep in a flock. Hours passed. They stamped about the platform in the fine rain or sat in a row on their packs, waiting for orders. A grey belt appeared behind the trees. The platform began to take on a silvery gleam. They sat in a row on their packs, waiting.

II

The company stood at attention lined up outside of their barracks, a long wooden shack covered with tar paper, in front of them was a row of dishevelled plane trees with white trunks that looked like ivory in the faint ruddy sunlight. Then there was a rutted road on which stood a long line of French motor trucks with hunched grey backs like elephants. Beyond these were more plane trees and another row of barracks covered with tar paper, outside of which other companies were lined up standing at attention.

A bugle was sounding far away.

The lieutenant stood at attention very stiffly. Fuselli’s eyes followed the curves of his brilliantly-polished puttees up to the braid on his sleeves.

“Parade rest!” shouted the lieutenant in a muffled voice.

Feet and hands moved in unison.

Fuselli was thinking of the town. After retreat you could go down the irregular cobbled street from the old fair-ground where the camp was to a little square where there was a grey stone fountain and a gin-mill where you could sit at an oak table and have beer and eggs and fried potatoes served you by a girl with red cheeks and plump white appetizing arms.

“Attention!”

Feet and hands moved in unison again. They could hardly hear the bugle, it was so faint.

“Men, I have some appointments to announce, said the lieutenant, facing the company and taking on an easy conversational tone. “At rest!… You’ve done good work in the storehouse here, men. I’m glad I have such a willing bunch of men under me. And I certainly hope that we can manage to make as many promotions as possible—as many as possible.”

Fuselli’s hands were icy, and his heart was pumping the blood so fast to his ears that he could hardly hear.

“The following privates to private first-class, read the lieutenant in a routine voice: “Grey, Appleton, Williams, Eisenstein, Porter…Eisenstein will be company clerk…. ” Fuselli was almost ready to cry. His name was not on the list. The sergeant’s voice came after a long pause, smooth as velvet.

“You forget Fuselli, sir.”

“Oh, so I did,” the lieutenant laughed—a small dry laugh. —“And Fuselli.”

“Gee, I must write Mabe tonight,” Fuselli was saying to himself. “She’ll be a proud kid when she gets that letter.”

“Companee dis…missed!”, shouted the sergeant genially.

“O Madermoiselle from Armenteers, Parley voo? O Madermoiselle from Armenteers,

struck up the sergeant in his mellow voice.

The front room of the cafe was full of soldiers. Their khaki hid the worn oak benches and the edges of the square tables and the red tiles of the floor. They clustered round the tables, where glasses and bottles gleamed vaguely through the tobacco smoke. They stood in front of the bar, drinking out of bottles, laughing, scraping their feet on the floor. A stout girl with red cheeks and plump white arms moved contentedly among them, carrying away empty bottles, bringing back full ones, taking the money to a grim old woman with a grey face and eyes like bits of jet, who stared carefully at each coin, fingered it with her grey hands and dropped it reluctantly into the cash drawer. In the corner sat Sergeant Olster with a flush on his face, and the corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield and another sergeant, a big man with black hair and a black mustache. About them clustered, with approbation and respect in their faces, Fuselli, Bill Grey and Meadville the cowboy, and Earl Williams, the blue-eyed and yellow-haired drug-clerk.

“O the Yanks are having the hell of a time, Parley voo?”

They pounded their bottles on the table in time to the song.

“It’s a good job,” the top sergeant said, suddenly interrupting the song. “You needn’t worry about that, fellers. I saw to it that we got a good job…. And about getting to the front, you needn’t worry about that. We’ll all get to the front soon enough…. Tell me—this war is going to last ten years.”

“I guess we’ll all be generals by that time, eh, Sarge?” said Williams. “But, man, I wish I was back jerkin’ soda water.”

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” murmured Fuselli automatically.

“But I’m beginnin’ to weaken,” said Williams. “Man, I’m homesick. I don’t care who knows it. I wish I could get to the front and be done with it,”

“Say, have a heart. You need a drink,” said the top sergeant, banging his fist on the table. “Say, mamselle, mame shows, mame shows!”

“I didn’t know you could talk French, Sarge,” said Fuselli.

“French, hell!” said the top sergeant. “Williams is the boy can talk French.”

“Voulay vous couchay aveck moy…. That’s all I know.”

Everybody laughed.

“Hey, mamzelle,” cried the top sergeant. “Voulay vous couchay aveck moy? We We,