by Thomas Boyd
“Good-by, canteens; I’m goin’ to throw mine away and run,” said Cole.
“Yes, you are. And we die of thirst. Come on, it’s not far now.”
They hurried blindly on. Another shell screeched over their heads and struck the edge of the ravine to their right. They were violently thrown against the opposite side.
“I sure do admire that boy’s aim. Let’s go, Hicks.”
Abruptly the ravine shallowed out and they found themselves running for the village, their bodies wholly exposed. As they approached, a door in one of the buildings of the badly battered town was thrown open and a voice called: “Here you are, fellows. Come in this way.”
“Hell, if you think you had it hard, you ought to have been with us.”
Hicks and Cole, resting after they had filled the canteens with water from a creaky pump in the village square, were seated in a room of the building through which they had entered the town. At the window near the door a thin-snouted Hotchkiss machine-gun was pointed out over the field. Beside it, his head lying against the saddle, a man was reclining. It was he who had spoken.
“Think of carrying one of these guns over your shoulder and walking through heavy rifle fire the whole length of that field! Pretty tough. Pretty tough.”
“Oh, forget about it; it’d a been worse if you’d a been killed.”
“I don’t know so much about that!”
“And when we got in this town. Boy, we sure did clump them Dutchmen over the head! Firin’ out of the windows, they were, and us comin’ in in plain sight. But we knocked ’em for a gool, a cock-eyed gool. I thought them God-damned Squareheads could fight.” He chuckled and stretched his body. “But you oughta seen ’em run when we swarmed in here.”
“I guess they fought well enough to knock off most of us.”
Hicks shuffled his feet restlessly. “Guess we’d better be gettin’ back, King.”
It had grown quite dark and along the lines of restless men white rockets were fired, to flare for a moment, covering a part of the ground with an intense brightness and then expiring on the ground with a short hiss.
The platoon was not in sight when they returned to the mouth of the ravine. But as the clanking of their canteens was heard, men hurried from their burrows and surrounded Hicks and Cole.
“Here, give me mine.”
“Mine’s the one with the dent in the side, Cole.”
“That’s not my canteen. Here, let me find it.”
“Git the hell away from here or you’ll never git anything to drink. Who the devil went after this water, anyway?”
Sergeant Harriman stood in the background, much to the surprise of Hicks, who had expected him to rush forward demanding that he be given his canteen first of all. The canteens were passed out and Harriman’s was the next to the last one.
“Thank you, Hicks,” said Harriman warmly.
“Go easy on that water now; we can’t go running to that town every five minutes, you men,” Sergeant Ryan called.
Along the ravine the water gurgled from the canteens into the mouths of the men. Their most pressing want satisfied, their thoughts soon turned to the matter of food, which they had been without for two days, save for the cans of salmon which Hicks and Pugh had salvaged from the dead men’s packs. After expressing among themselves their desire for food they raised their voices and began to lament:
“What makes the wildcats wild?”
“Because they’re hungry.”
“Why are they hungry?”
“Because there ain’t no chow.”
“Why ain’t they got no chow?”
“Because they ain’t got nobody to look out for them.”
“Pipe down, up there,” scolded Lieutenant Bedford. “If the ration detail don’t come along pretty soon, we’ll send one of our own after chow.”
Hours of quiet passed, while the men silently lay in their burrows in the ravine, listening to the cheerful chirp of the crickets, and trying to relax their nerves which had been tautened almost to breaking by the terrific barrage of the early afternoon.
“Je’s, I wish we had some more of that salmon, Pugh. We were crazy to give it all away.”
“No, we wasn’t. These mamma’s boys’d starve to death if somebody didn’t pr’vide for ’em.”
While they were talking, Sergeant Harriman, stealing along the ravine, came to their burrow: “Here’s some Argentina beef that you fellows can have some of. I got three cans of it.”
It was a little blue can, and when Pugh lifted a piece of it to his mouth he shuddered. “Smells like some’p’n you’ve stepped in. Mah guts can’t go that stuff.”
“Yes, they can,” Harriman encouraged. “It’s not half bad if you don’t breathe while you’re chewing it. I’ve been eating it all day.”
Pugh, holding his nostrils together, gulped down a handful of the evil-smelling food. “That’s not so bad, Hicksy. Try some of it.”
He passed over the can to Hicks.
In the early morning the German lines were represented by a black strip of woods, some five hundred yards in the distance, that looked a narrow piece of jet-black lace through the gray dawn. To the men on watch it was inconceivable that such a calm, almost sketched scene existed so near to them. The brain-piercing explosions of the shells still remembered, the calmness of the surroundings was unreal. Quiet belonged to another world.
Day broke fully. From above, the hot sun beat cruelly upon the earth. The helmets of the men were like hot frying-pans. Sweat soaked through the padding in the helmets and ran down the men’s faces in tiny, dirty rivulets. Their skin, beneath their woollen shirts and breeches, itched unbearably. At the knees, where the breeches tightly fitted, the shell powder had soaked through and was biting the flesh.
There was a sameness about the expressions on the men’s faces. As yet it was barely perceptible. The mouths had set in certain rigid lines. The lids of the eyes were narrowed, and beneath them the pupils reflected only a dull apathy. Of each man the shoulders sagged as if bowed down with a dreadful weight.
Hicks lay against the sloping wall of the ravine, his head peeping over, watching an airplane circle lazily above. The drone of its engine was like some enormous bluebottle fly. It was soothing. A slight breeze rippled the wheat. “Ah,” he breathed. But on the breeze was carried a stomach-turning stench. It was sweet and putrid and seemed to take substance around the nostrils. As the heat of the day grew more, the odor strengthened until Hicks felt as if he were submerged in it up to his eyes.
As the sun glided out of sight the odor became less evident, until at last, as the shadows were thrown full length, it ceased entirely to be.
Lieutenant Bedford made his way along the ravine. “Where’s Sergeant Harriman?”
Harriman poked his pallid face out of his burrow.
“Yes, sir?”
“Oh, there you are, Harriman. Pick out four men to go after rations. Right after dark.”
“Shall I go along in charge?”
“Go if you want to. Ryan and I can take care of things all right.”
The ration party tracked through the thick woods, purpled with late evening. Trees stretched gaunt arms in awkward gestures toward the sombre-colored sky, through which lights gaily winked and danced. Under foot were objects over which they tried to step without touching. Now and then a foot would strike a dead man’s pack or his body, and some one would draw back, mutter “Damn,” feeling as if he had committed sacrilege. Branches of trees, half torn from the trunk by shell explosion, barred their way. On they walked, their hands flung out in front of them, and walking as closely to each other as was possible. Passing one place in the woods Harriman thought:
“Here’s where Halvorsen got killed.”
They went on farther. An open space in the woods reminded him that it was there that Kahl received three machine-gun b
ullets through his head. “He’s probably rotten by this time.” Harriman shivered to his marrow. It seemed hours before they got out of the woods and into the field through which a small dusty road ran toward the village where they had first gone into action.
In outline the buildings, worn down by heavy shell fire, clung to each other for moral encouragement. They looked so tightly clustered in their common misery suffered by devastation.
A shell, like the flash of lightning, hurtled over and resounded as does that kind of lightning after which one says: “That struck somewhere, all right.”
The village was being used as the supply station for the regiment. Inside the shattered houses and barns the field kitchens had been drawn; in the dim light made by candles the mess sergeant was the centre of a group of unwashed louts dressed in greasy blue denim.
“Say, Weaver, where’s our chow?”
“Been sellin’ another quarter of beef to the Frogs again?”
“Don’t you let us catch you at any o’ them fancy tricks.”
Weaver was a small, shifty-looking person. It had been found out by the platoon that he had once sold the company axe to a Frenchman for a gallon of vin rouge, and since that time he had always been suspected of making away with the company’s rations.
“How do you boys expect to git any chow if you don’t come after it? The chow was here, but you wasn’t.”
“You think we can fight Germans and run up here after chow, too?” The men were belligerent.
“Of course he does. These damned yellah grease balls ain’t got any sense.”
“Yellow? I like that. Jist because you guys are up there at the front that ain’t no sign there ain’t other places jist as dangerous.”
The squabble would have gone on indefinitely had not the arrival of a flock of shells ended it then. Weaver had thrown himself under the field kitchen, where he arrived at the same time his assistants did.
The ration party had remained standing. “Get up, Weaver,” Harriman commanded, “and get our chow.”
There was coffee, boiled potatoes, boiled beef and white bread. Placing a stick through the handles of the coffee container, Harriman and another man led the way. One man carried the bread and the other two brought the potatoes and meat.
They walked along the road to the woods without an adventure. Through the woods they made their way without a mishap until they arrived at a clearing. Then, for some reason, a salvo of shells were fired which struck with the wild shriek of some lost soul. After the shell had exploded, the man with the bread could be seen gathering up the loaves from where they had rolled when he threw himself on the ground. The others had remained standing for fear they would spill the food.
“Oh, Hicks. Hicksy, the ration party’s come.”
Pugh shook Hicks from his slumber.
“What. . . . The ration party? Whatta they got?”
“That’s jis’ what I’m goin’ to see. Hurry up or the rest of these hogs’ll eat it all up on us.”
They walked quickly toward the place where a queue of men had formed.
“Hurry up, you guys. Bring your canteen cups. Sergeant-major coffee.”
It was a glorious moment.
“Is it hot?” asked Hicks.
“Hot as blazes.”
“Hold me, Pugh, I’m faintin’ with joy. Coffee, hot! And milk and sugar in it.”
They sat around and munched their food and drank their coffee. Under the feeling of warmth in their stomachs many of the men relaxed and their thoughts became once again normal.
The platoon had grown used to the late afternoon bombardment that beat and slashed at them every day. The shells driving at them with a white fury were accepted as a part of the whole stunning, disagreeable duty of the front line. As their durance in the ravine lengthened they were able even to comment upon the fierceness or the comparative mildness of the attack.
In his burrow Sergeant Ryan, his blouse and undershirt lying by his side, was exploring with his right hand a place beneath his left shoulder-blade that had begun to pain. His fingers felt a swollen, hurting lump. As he pressed on it, a pain like being prodded in a nerve with a needle shot through him.
Lieutenant Bedford, from a burrow near by, leaned out.
“What’s the matter, Ryan.” Looking for cooties?”
“No, there’s something the matter with my shoulder. It’s swelled.”
“Let’s see. . . . Hell, man, you’d better go back to the dressing station. You’ve been hit.”
“Take your knife and see if you can get it out.”
“What do you think I am, a surgeon? You report to the first-aid station and let them send you to the hospital. I don’t want any men to come down with gangrene.”
Ryan, reluctant, departed alone, his small reddish mustache still smartly waxed, his puttees neatly rolled, his helmet set jauntily on his head.
In the early morning light the outlines of the objects in front of the ravine were crisply apparent. The strands of barbed wire were blackly filigreed against the opaque light of the horizon. An aluminum moon hung waveringly in the sky. The stalks of wheat stood stiffly erect, their yellowness merging in the distance with the shadowy green of the trees. On the breath of the morning wind was carried the sweet, sickening smell of decayed cadavers. To the left and to the right unbroken lines of infinite length lay huddled in holes, the guardians of their snoring hours seeing without variation the same sight. For the sector which the platoon was holding the night had not been quiet. Eyes, though worn with constant straining to pierce the shadows, had seen the wheat tops moving; and ears, the drums battered by the explosion of striking shells, had still heard the rustling among the stalks. So rifles, venomous and catlike, had spit shots of fire into the dark.
As the sun rose, the heat growing more intense, the nauseating smell from the corpses in the field seemed to coat all objects in one’s line of vision with a sticky green. Even the tops of wheat, standing stiffly in the field, looked as if they were covered with a fetid substance.
Occasionally, as the day advanced, a man would labor over the opening of a can of Argentina beef with the point of his bayonet. And then the contents would be exposed, green and sepulchrally white, the odor mingling and not quite immersed in the odor of decaying human flesh.
Laboring over the small blue can, sweat poured down their chests, the streams dislodging particles of dirt and sweeping them down their bodies.
The air was dead. The sky was suspended not high above the earth. The odors had ceased to move; they were massive, grotesquely shaped objects fastly rooted to the earth. The silence was elephantine.
And somewhere in the everlasting silence a frightened, hurt, bewildered voice broke tentatively forth:
“Landsmann. Oh, Landsmann! Kamerad. Hilfen Sie mich.”
Hicks and Pugh, their heads peering over the crest of the ravine, started, then listened, their ears like terriers’.
“Mein Gott. Ich bin gewundet. O-o-o G-o-tt.” The voice floated through the heavy stillness.
Pugh put the butt of his rifle to his shoulder. “Watch out; it’s one of their damned tricks.”
“Put down your gun, you fool. Nobody could fake a voice like that.”
While they were talking the voice once again reached them. In the stillness it seemed as if it were at their sides. “Landsmann, Landsmann, hilf mich bitte.”
“The poor fellow must be half dead. Kruger! Oh, Paul, there’s a wounded Squarehead out in front here. Talk to him, will you.”
A bleached but eager-faced Kruger came out of his burrow and commenced to talk in German to the wounded man.
“What does he say, Paul? What does he say?” A group had gathered around the scene.
“He says some of you guys shot him in the guts and that he’s pretty bad off.”
“Well, let’s go out and git him. We can’t
let him lie there all day.”
“Is he all right, Kruger? I mean is he a good guy?”
“How the hell do I know? He sounds all right.”
“Kruger.” Pugh insinuated himself closer. “Kruger, let’s you and me go git him? Huh?”
And Jack Pugh, from Meridian, Mississippi, Jack Pugh, the gambler, who could make a pair of ivory cubes cakewalk and tango, was the first man to volunteer to rescue the wounded German.
The German had to be moved very carefully. Directly above the wide leather belt that he wore around the waist the gray uniform was soaked with blood. Pugh and Kruger carried him from the field and lowered him to the bottom of the ravine.
“Now what do you think of the Kaiser, you damn Squarehead?”
“Bet, by God, he wishes he’d stayed home drinkin’ beer.”
“Hell, these Dutchmen git beer right in the trenches.” The speaker passed his tongue over his dry lips.
“Shut up. Can’t you let the poor devil alone? He probably hates the Kaiser as much as the rest of us.”
The wounded German raised himself on his shoulder, gasping with pain. “Kaiser. Gottverdammt.”
He fell back exhausted. The stretcher bearers who had been sent for arrived and placed him on a stretcher. They started to carry him to the dressing station.
“Wait a minute there, buddy.” A muddy, wizened-face soldier, advancing with an open razor in his hand, snipped a button from the German’s tunic. “There, that goes home to my gal.”
The platoon had been subjected to heavy bombardment since, two weeks earlier, they had occupied the ravine, but upon this particular afternoon there was a force, a spitefulness, an overwhelming, dull, sickening insistence to the dropping, exploding shells that made each one of the men feel that, as any of them would have expressed it, “one of them seabags has got my name marked on it in big letters.” The shells hammered over, shaking the sides of the ravine as they broke and sending particles of flying steel through the air, to land with a “zip” on the ground. Men called for stretcher bearers until there were no more stretcher bearers, and, as it seemed, as if there were no more men to call. And meanwhile the thick, pungent smoke from the exploding shells was filling up the ravine and seeking out the throats and eyes of the men, to blind and choke them. Before it was over there were men, ostrich-like, with their heads in their burrows as far as they could get them. Many of them were blubbering, not so much from fright as from nerves that had broken under the insistent battering of the shells. But when it ended they were ready at the call to stand by to repel an enemy of any size.
