The Project Gutenberg EBook of Through the Wheat, by Thomas Boyd This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Through the Wheat Author: Thomas Boyd Release Date: January 31, 2019 [EBook #58796] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE WHEAT *** Produced by Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THROUGH THE WHEAT THROUGH THE WHEAT BY THOMAS BOYD CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK · LONDON 1923 Copyright, 1923, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published April, 1923 THROUGH THE WHEAT I Dusk, like soft blue smoke, fell with the dying spring air and settled upon the northern French village. In the uncertain light one and two story buildings set along the crooked street showed crisply, bearing a resemblance to false teeth in an ash-old face. To young Hicks, disconsolate as he leaned against the outer wall of the French canteen, upon whose smooth white surface his body made an unseemly blot, life was worth very little. For nine interminable months William Hicks had been in France, shunted from one place to another, acting out the odious office of the military police, working as a stevedore beside evil-odored blacks, helping to build cantonments and reservoirs for new soldiers ever arriving from the United States. And he was supposed to be a soldier. He had enlisted with at least the tacit understanding that he was some day to fight. At the recruiting office in Cincinnati the bespangled sergeant had told him: “Join the marines and see some real action.” And the heart of William Hicks had fled to the rich brogue and campaign ribbons that the sergeant professionally wore. But was this action? Was this war? Was this for what William Hicks had come to France? Well, he told himself, it was not. Soldiering with a shovel. A hell of a way to treat a white man. There were plenty of people to dig holes in the ground, but not many of them could qualify as sharpshooters. And Hicks swelled his chest a trifle, noticing the glint of the metal marksmanship badge on his tunic. Resting beside him on the ground was a display of unopened food tins above which rose the slender necks of bottles. Of the bottles there were four, prisoning the white wine of the northern French vineyards. Excessive in number were the cans, and they looked as if their contents were edible. But Hicks was not sure. He had bought them from the wizened little French clerk who had regarded him with suspicion through the window of the canteen. For this suspicion, this slight hostility, Hicks did not blame the little Frenchman. He had, he realized, made an ass of himself by pointing to ambiguously labelled cans piled on the shelves inside the canteen and saying: “la, combien?” Now he possessed a choice array of cans of whose contents he knew nothing. All that he asked was that he might be able to eat it. That morning he had marched into the town with his tired platoon from a small deserted railway station some miles distant. Once assigned to the houses in which they were to be billeted, the men had unstrapped their blankets and fallen asleep. But not Hicks. He had explored the village with an eye to disposing of the mass of soiled and torn franc-notes which he carried in his pocket. In the French canteen he had found the place for which he was looking. And so he had stood before the clerk, demanding to buy as much of the stock as he could carry. But the clerk had closed the window, leaving Hicks with a handful of French money and the tinned food and four bottles of vin blanc. Hence his disconsolation. The roll of paper felt unnatural, superfluous in his pocket. He was tempted to fling it away. In the morning the platoon would find the canteen and buy the last can, the last bottle. Restive, he ran his lean fingers through his uncombed hair, wondering vaguely whether it were true that his regiment was soon to depart for the front. It must be true, he decided. There had been an untoward attitude on the part of his officers since the moment that the departure of the platoon had been made known. Their destination had been scrupulously kept from them. In corroboration, a long-range gun boomed sullenly in the distance. The noise produced in him a not unpleasant shiver of apprehension. He met it, summoning a quiet smile of scorn. Yes, he would be glad to go to the front, to that vague place from which men returned with their mutilated bodies. Not that he was vengeful. His feeling for the German army was desultory, a blend of kaleidoscopic emotions in which hate never entered. But in conflict, he felt, would arise a reason for his now unbearable existence. The grinning weakness which men called authority had followed him since the day of his enlistment at the beginning of [1] [2] [3] [4] the war. It had turned thoughts of valor into horrible nightmares, the splendor of achievement into debased bickering. Most of the men, it seemed to him, had not entered the army to further the accomplishment of a common motive; they had enlisted or had been made officers and gentlemen—Congress had generously made itself the cultural father of officers—for the purpose of aiding their personal ambitions. It had darkened. Hicks gathered up his sorry feast and sauntered off through the shaking, mysterious shadows to his pallet of straw. Stretched out upon individual beds of straw which had been strewn over the stone floor, the members of the platoon were lying before a huge fireplace that drew badly in the early spring wind. In all of their nine months in France this was the first time that they had thus lain, not knowing what was to come on the following day, nor caring, being only satisfied by the warmth which came from the fireplace, by their sense of feeling intact and comfortable. In this sense of reconciliation John Pugh, the Mississippi gambler, forgot his everlasting dice-throwing, which every pay-day that the platoon had thus far known had won for him more money than his company commander received from the United States Government. He sighed, elongating his limbs beneath his blanket. He made an effort to rise, and succeeded in resting the weight of his torso on his arm which he had crooked under him. Cautiously he felt for a cigarette beneath his tunic, which he was using for a pillow. He got the cigarette and a match, then held them in his hand, hesitant. His eyes, large and dolorous, searched the dimly lighted room, scanning the recumbent figures to discover whether they were asleep. Men were lying, their shoes beside their heads, their army packs, rifles, leaning against the wall and the remainder of their equipment scattered near by. They were silent, motionless. “I guess I can risk it,” thought Pugh, and he carefully struck the match and lighted his cigarette. As the match was rubbed over the floor heads appeared; the stillness was broken. “Oh, Jack, thought you didn’t have any more cigarettes.” “You got fifty francs offa me last month. I think you ought to give me a smoke!” The voice was reproachful. Effectually and instantly Pugh checked the avalanche of reproach: “Hey, you fellas, there’s beaucoup mail up at regimental headquahtas.” The clumsy shadows in the darkened room answered: “Aw bunk.” “Cut out that crap.” “How do you get that way, Jack? You know there ain’t no mail up at regimental.” “Well,” Pugh sighed, “if you all don’ wanna heah f’m your mammy I don’ give a damn.... Oh-o. What you all got, Hicks?” Hicks had arrived at his billet, his arms filled with the bottles of wine and the cans of the questionable contents. Candles were lighted and set on the helmets of the men. Bodies rose to a sitting posture, eyes on Hicks. “Gimme a drink, Hicksy!” “Hooray, look what Hicks’s got.” “Yeh, gimme a drink.” The voices were clamorous. “Gimme, gimme? Was your mouth bored out with a gimlet,” Hicks jeered. “Why didn’t you buy some?” They formed a semicircle around the fireplace in front of which Hicks sat with his plunder. Over the bottles they grew noisily talkative. “Say, have you fellows seen any of these new guys here?” asked Hicks. “I was walkin’ down one of the streets by the Frog canteen and one of ’em asked me if I was in the balloon corps. I told him yes, and asked him how he guessed it, and he said, ‘Oh, I saw that balloon on your cap.’” “They sure are a bunch of funny birds. I ast one of ’em how long he’d been over on this side and he said: ‘About three weeks—seen anybody that’s come over lately?’” A contingent of soldiers which had arrived in the village that afternoon were, therefore, objects of scorn and hostility. “Aw, they’re some of them fellahs that the wind blew in. Pretty soon they’ll have the home guards over here.” “They will like hell! If you could git them home guards away from home you’d sure have to hump. They’re home guards—they guard our women while we’re over here.” The speaker seemed afraid that his listeners would not understand that he was stressing the word home. “Yeh, they’s one of ’em guardin’ my gal too close. I got a lettah....” [5] [6] [7] [8] “You’re lucky to get any kind of a letter. Here I been for three months and not a word. I don’t know whether they all died or what,” Hicks ended gloomily. “Aw cheer up, Hicksy, old boy. Maybe your mail was on that transport that got sunk.” A head was thrust in the door. It was the first sergeant. “Pipe down, you damned recruits. Lights are supposed to be out at eight o’clock. If you guys want to git work detail for the rest of your lives——” “All right, you dirty German spy. Git the hell out of here and let us sleep.” All of the candles had been put out as soon as the voice of the first sergeant was heard. The men had flung themselves on their beds. Now each one pretended to be asleep. “Who said that?” The first sergeant was furious. “I’ll work you birds till your shoes fall off.” The room answered with loud and affected snores. The first sergeant, in all of his fierceness, disappeared. II 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. [9] [10] [11] [12] 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. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] III Three days were spent by the platoon at the little village. On the evening of the third day, just as the men had formed in a long, impatient line before the field kitchen, with their aluminum food receptacles held out to catch the thin, reddish stew surlily thrown at them, the company commander walked among them bearing words of dour import. Captain Powers talked softly and gently, wringing the words from his heart, burnishing them with a note of sadness: “Stay close to your billets to-night after chow, men. We’re moving up to the front some time to-night.” He passed by them, and those whom he passed shuffled their feet, looking furtively at the ground. There was very little comment. The shuffling line was funereal. Men smiled at Captain Powers, but their smiles lacked certitude. When they had packed their belongings in the stipulated military manner the pall remained, vaguely hanging over them, drawing them together in their common aversion from the future. In the rooms they sat on their packs, nervously waiting to move. The moonlight streamed in through the window and showed the gray whitewashed walls of the deserted room. The fireplace was a black maw. Night fell in mysterious folds, giving the appearance of unfamiliarity to the squat French houses, the spired Gothic church, the trees which drooped their boughs in a stately canopy over the smooth gray road. The men, their feet striking against the cobblestones, clumped through the village streets and along the road. The sector toward which the platoon was moving had once been the scene of violent conflict, but of late, with the more important military manœuvres taking place farther west, it had dropped into a peaceful desuetude. It lay a few miles from Verdun, among the green-covered concealed fortresses, from which the noses of mammoth artillery unexpectedly rose. Tops of thickly wooded hills reared evenly in an unbroken line. Between the crests the shadow- hidden valleys rested serene, content with their secrets of the dead. Along the base of the mauve chain of hills wound a trench from which French soldiers, most of whom were on the farther side of fifty, sat around in dugouts and drank their ration of Pinard or squatted, their shirts off, hunting lice in the seams. The platoon marched up in the pitch-black night, slipping, from time to time, off the slimy duck boards which had been placed in the bottom of the trench to prevent traffic from being buried in the mud. Their packs, with hip rubber boots, bandoliers of ammunition, bombs, and shovels, bowed them over as they cautiously and cursingly made their way through the communication trench. Somewhere ahead a white light flared with a sputtering noise. “Stand fast!” Lieutenant Bedford called out peremptorily. The men stood as rocks, their arms crooked, covering their faces. The light dropped slowly and unemotionally to the ground, dying out. Again all was blackness. Sergeant Harriman, who had gone ahead as billeting officer, now joined the platoon and piloted the men into the trench. The main trench was much wider than the communication trench, but passage along it was difficult because of the half-checkered manner in which it had been laid out. Not waiting to be relieved, the French soldiers one by one had disappeared into the night. Now the platoon stood silent and ill at ease. No one knew where to go, and so the entire body was ordered to remain standing in the firing bays until morning. Dawn broke upon a desolate field where rusty barbed wire clung awkwardly to the posts on which it had been strung. There were a few gnarled and stunted trees, the wreck of what once had been a French farmhouse, and that was all. Hicks peered over the parapet, wondering how near he was to the enemy. He stepped upon the firing step of firm clay. A few yards away were the torn and rusted tracks of the Paris-Metz railway. Beyond that was just an uncared-for field, which, in the distance, lost itself in the gray of the horizon. He experienced a strange feeling of awe, as if he were looking upon another world. The early sun threw the trees and barbed wire into a queer perspective and gave them a harsh, unreal aspect. In the early springtime this particular sector looked very much like one of the calm farms which Hicks was accustomed to see in many parts of Ohio. The birds sang as lightheartedly, the sun was as bright, the grass was as green and fragrant over the slightly rolling field. All was quite as it should be. Only Hicks was out of the picture. Ordinarily he would have been contemplating such a pastoral scene from the window of a railway train or from a northern Michigan farmhouse, where he would have been spending his summer vacation. He would have been dressed in a blue flannel suit, with a sailor hat, a white shirt of some soft summery material and a rather striking tie. His hose would have been of silk and his cool white underclothes would have been of the “athletic” type, Hicks mused. Then he became aware of himself. In place of the straw sailor there lay very heavily on his head a steel helmet that, though he had thought it chic for a while, was now no more distinguished-looking than the aluminum dish in which his food was rationed to him. He had worn his drab shirt for two weeks, and there were black rings around the collar and wrists. His gas-mask, girded over his chest, looked foul and unclean; he had used it for a pillow, for a dining-table, and [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] often, he realized, it had been thrown in some muddy place when he had sickened of having it about him like an ever- present albatross. The knees of his breeches were as soiled and as uncomfortable as his shirt, and his puttees and shoes were crusted thickly with dried mud. His stock-taking of his dress was interrupted by the knowledge that a persistent vermin was exploring the vicinity of his breast. He could not apprehend it because of his gas-mask, which, suspended from his neck, was strapped to his chest. After the first few days life in the trenches became inordinately dull, so dull that an occasional shell fired from the artillery of either side was a signal for the members of the platoon to step into the trench and speculate where it struck. Every night two squads of the platoon stood watch while the others slept. Hicks, with Bullis, was stationed in a shell hole a few yards ahead of the front line. The shell hole was half filled with water and it was cold. After three or four hours the hip rubber boots made Hicks think that his feet were a pair of dead fish in a refrigerator. It was customary for the corporal of the guard and the lieutenant each night to inspect the outposts, but because the ground was wet and because of the strands of unmanageable barbed wire the lieutenant had stayed in his dugout, permitting the corporal of the guard to have the honor of inspecting. One night, when the dampness seemed like a heavily draped ghost that wanted to kiss Hicks’s entire body, and when his eyes had completely tired from the strain of imagining that the stumps and posts in the field were moving, Hicks fell asleep. In his cramped position, sitting on a board over a shell hole, with his feet in the icy water, Hicks’s sleep was full of fantastic dreams. He might have slept until the noonday sun awakened him, had he not slipped from his seat and sprawled into the water. This awakened Bullis, who invariably went to sleep, remaining so until the watch was over. “What the hell’s coming off?” Hicks awakened with a jerk. “Christ, it’s time to go in.” They observed the sun, which was slowly climbing over the horizon and shedding the earth with a silvery light. The sky was almost smoked-pearl colored, and before it the trees and barbed wire made sharp sentinels. Silently they picked up their rifles and slunk into the trench. Answering the guard’s challenging “Halt, who’s there?” with an “Oh, shut up,” they stepped on the slippery duck board. “Say, Hicksy, you’d better look out. What the hell were you guys up to last night?” the guard asked. “What do you mean? We weren’t up to anything.” “Well, old Hepburn came back here after being out to your hole, a-cussin’ like hell. He said you guys couldn’t take advantage of your friendship with him like that and get away with it.” “I don’t know what he meant. Let’s beat it, Bullis.” They went to their dugout, where they slept with their shoes beneath their heads, to keep, as Hicks almost truthfully remarked, the rats from carrying them away. The major’s orderly, his dignity wrestling with the slippery footing of the duck boards, marched down the trench from battalion headquarters. Stopping in front of the dugout which Hicks and Bullis had entered, he removed his helmet, patted his hair, and called: “Is Private Hicks in there? Tell Private Hicks Major Adams wants to see him.” His hair a rat’s nest, and a heavy beard on his muddy-looking face, Hicks looked out of the entrance of the dugout. “What’s the matter?” The orderly turned about and marched back toward battalion headquarters with Hicks following him. Major Adams belonged to that type of officer each of which you meet with the feeling that he is the sole survivor of the school of regular soldiers. He was a tall, slim, very erect person. His face was ascetic, though gossip about his personal affairs proclaimed him to be fiercely lustful. He wore his campaign hat adeptly. He limped as he walked, from an unhealed gunshot wound received in the Philippines. Campaign ribbons were strung across his breast. With him authority was as impersonal as the fourth dimension. He was adored and held in awe by half of the battalion. Private Hicks stepped inside the major’s dugout and saluted. “You wanted to see me, sir?” “Hicks, you were reported this morning to have gone to sleep while on outpost duty.” Hicks started visibly. “That’s true, sir.” “Well, what the hell kind of a soldier are you, anyway?” Major Adams fairly bit his words loose. “I don’t know, sir. I mean, I guess I’ve been a pretty good soldier.” “You have like hell, Hicks, and you know it. Now, why did you go to sleep on watch?” [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] Hicks knew that if he were court-martialled his sentence might be life imprisonment. It might be anything, he reflected, that the group of morons sitting in solemn judgment might decide to give him. Major Adams also knew it. “Sir, the hours are too long. Nobody can stay awake when he goes on watch eight hours every night.” “Yes?” Major Adams raised an eyebrow forbiddingly. “Well, sir, there’s two feet of water in the shell hole where my post is, and I guess I got so numb with cold that I went to sleep.” “And you never thought to bail it out? I knew that officers were so damned dumb that they needed dog-robbers, but I didn’t know that enlisted men were. Now, Hicks, you haven’t a case at all. But”—he was silent a moment—“some day you might make a good soldier. You wouldn’t have a chance if you were to get a general court martial, because the judges would have you hung as an example. Hicks,” he said, “I’m going to let this drop. You may go.” Mumbling a “thank you, sir,” Hicks very properly about-faced and left the dugout. IV The platoon had been in the trenches for about six weeks. Everything had been quiet, well-ordered. Occasionally a shell from the German batteries would start lazily off and end up with terrific speed in the platoon’s trench. Once or twice men were killed when the shells struck, and their bodies were hurried away to the dressing station; one morning the body of a red-haired German, an immense fellow with a broad forehead, large wide eyes, and a huge mouth, was found fastened to the strands of barbed wire in front of Hicks’s post. There was a hole in his side made by the explosion of a small hand-bomb. Besides that, there was nothing of interest. In fact, there was too little of interest. Not even a prisoner had been taken, although the colonel of the regiment had let it be known that the first man to capture a prisoner would be given a fifteen-days leave to Aix-le-Bains. So it was decided that a raiding party was what was needed to resuscitate the platoon from its lethargy. It was for this reason that when Hicks and Bullis set out through the trench toward their shell hole one night they were stopped by the lieutenant and told that they had been relieved for the night and were to return to their dugout and await his orders. Hicks was disturbed. He felt as if the lieutenant’s orders had in some way to do with his sleeping on watch. He had not minded the consequences so much when he was walking toward battalion headquarters, but now that everything with regard to the affair seemed to have been smouldering, he was fearful. Being rather reckless, probably the first time that Major Adams’s remark that he might get a general court martial was fully realized by him was at the moment when he and Bullis had been sent back to their dugout. Now he sat, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. What the hell was he to do? It was the first time he had thought of his family. What would Maisie say when she discovered that he, William Hicks, was in Fort Leavenworth? What would the gang at the office say? And his mother? Maybe they might order him to be shot! This was a mess. But no, wasn’t there a general order recently made to the effect that no one in the American Expeditionary Forces could be executed without permission of President Wilson? Sure there was. Good of the old horse-face to think of that. But maybe there was a way to get out of it yet. He considered for a moment the advisability of clambering over the trench and setting forth into that unexplored field, never to return unless he brought a German prisoner with him. Let’s see, how had they done it, he mused. There were plenty of heroes who could. They’d just fill their pockets with hand-grenades and blow up a machine-gun nest. “Major Adams, I fulfilled your prediction! Here!”—indicating three fierce-looking Germans with the stump of his left arm, which had been shot off during his single-handed assault. “And there were five more, but I would have had to carry them.” Bunk. “All right, Hicks and Bullis. Are you all set?” Lieutenant Bedford, with his aggressive little mustache, was peering into the dugout from the trench. “Here’s some blacking for your bayonets. We’re going on a raiding party to-night.” “Hooray. That’s the stuff.” But the voice of Bullis was weak and shaky. “When do we go?” Hicks was nonplussed. He hastily wondered whether he had said a prayer that had been answered. He wanted some source to lay this bit of good fortune to. And at the same time he doubted whether it was unalloyed fortune, whether there were not some disagreeable part to be performed. So he said nothing, but began in a businesslike manner to dim the lustre of his bayonet with the blacking Bedford had given to him. “We’ll be ready to start in a half-hour. We’ve got to wait for guides from the Intelligence section.” Lieutenant Bedford walked away. When the guides arrived and the representatives from each platoon were assembled it was night, and so dark that one could not see another in front of him. A lieutenant and a sergeant from the Intelligence section led the way, with Hicks and Bullis sandwiched in the middle of the long line that kept from separating by the man in rear holding to the shoulder of the man in front of him. [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] Instead of leaving the trench by Hicks’s shell hole, the party turned in the opposite direction, and, after walking along the slippery duck boards for ten or more minutes, climbed over a firing bay and worked their way through a path that a succession of well-placed shells had blown in the barbed wire. Their feet, scuffing through the tall grass, hissed like a scythe cutting heavy weeds. That, and an occasional cough, were the only noises of the night. Suddenly Hicks’s foot struck a large, yielding substance. He felt with his feet, prodding into the thing, which caused a fearful stench to rise. “Hey, what’s this?” he softly called, and the Intelligence-section sergeant came running back only to exclaim in a voice that had been hardened by one other raiding party: “That? Why, that’s only a dead Boche.” A moment afterward an automatic rifle broke nervously into a series of put-put-puts. As one man, the party fell flat on their stomachs. “Put-put-put. Put-put-put,” said the automatic rifle. “Damnation,” Bedford cursed. “It’s somebody from our lines firing at us.” “Well, don’t talk so loud,” one of the men said angrily, “or you’ll have both sides on us.” The lieutenant from the Intelligence section gave orders for the men to lie prone and to crawl after him. After a while he rose, motioning for the others to get up. “I think,” he said, talking to Bedford in an undertone, “that this is the place where we get back in the trench. Let’s count up our men and see if they are all here.” They counted as many times as a surgeon counts the sponges he uses in an operation, but each count only made more certain that there was one man missing. Investigation showed them that the lost man was Corporal Olin, from the adjoining company. While they were debating upon what course to take, they noticed from their lines a green rocket fired into the air. “Gas,” hoarsely cried the lieutenant of the Intelligence section, struggling to get on his respirator. Poor Hicks knew not what to do. Before the rocket had been fired he had about decided to return to look for the missing corporal. But with a respirator on he could hardly breathe, not to consider finding his way in the dark. But of a sudden he whipped off his mask and started off in the direction from which they had crawled. No one noticed his leaving, for each man was too much taken up with his own affairs. Hicks walked for a while, until he felt that he had neared the place where the automatic rifle had begun firing at them. Then he dropped upon his knees, and with his hands spread out as far along the ground as he could spread them, felt for the lost body. Perspiration was drenching him. It ran down his face and dropped off his chin, to splash unconcernedly on the canvas covering of his mask. He felt as if all the blood of his body was in the veins of his face. There! Certainly it was a body. “Olin,” he whispered. “Olin.” But there was no answer. He felt along the body until his hand touched the face. It was warm, and then he knew that he had found Olin. But not Olin! Just a body that had once been Olin. For Olin was dead. Along the tunic and under the respirator box was a warm, sticky substance. Hicks placed his hand over the breast above the heart. It failed to beat. “Oh, hell!” he muttered, and started to crawl back, hardly caring whether he reached the raiding party or not. To have saved Corporal Olin, to have brought him into the trench, staggering under the weight over his shoulder, would, he realized, have exonerated him completely in the eyes of Major Adams. Further, he would have received either a Distinguished Service Cross or a Croix de Guerre. But how could he, what sort of a fool would he have looked like, carrying a dead man over his shoulder all the way into the trench! Well, it was simply a case of misplaced heroism. He shrugged his shoulder and went on. When he arrived at the place where he had left the party, just enough light had broken to enable him to see them sprawled on the ground. With their respirators still on they seemed, in the dim light, like pompous owls. Hicks approached, casually inquiring why they had not taken off their masks. The lieutenant of the Intelligence section, after wildly motioning with his hands, took off his mask, sniffed, and proceeded to curse Hicks for not informing him that the gas had blown away. “We might have been killed out here any minute, you damned bonehead.” “Yes, and we probably will be killed now if we don’t get out of this pretty soon. In five minutes it will be broad daylight. Besides, the gas alarm was all a fake,” Hicks answered. Now all the men had returned their respirators to the boxes which were fastened by a cord around their necks to their breasts. The sergeant of the Intelligence section set out to find the path in the barbed wire, but there was none where he looked. He turned back, the men following after him like lost sheep, and after sneaking along the wire for some minutes, stopped. “Hey, you over there in the trench. Pass the word along that the raiding party’s coming in,” the sergeant of the [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] Intelligence section called toward the trench. One of the sentries in the firing bay heard him, obeyed, and the raiding party dashed through the wire and spilled into the trench. The company commander, a former professor of English at a Texas college, emerged from a near-by dugout and warmly wrung the hand of the lieutenant from the Intelligence section. “My God, I thought you boys were surely to be killed! You see, I—I must have forgotten that the raiding party was still out, and when I heard that machine-gun firing I thought the Germans were making an attack, so I signalled for a barrage.” “But you sent up the gas signal instead of the barrage signal,” Bedford interposed. “Yes, that was just it. I thought that I was firing a red rocket and instead I was firing a green one.” He broke off quickly. “But you got in all right?” “All right but for one man,” said Bedford. “And where is he?” the captain asked. “He—he’s dead,” Hicks told the assembly. Bedford turned quickly. “Hicks, how do you know he’s dead?” “Well, I saw him. You can see for yourself. He’s out there dead.” V The platoon had been promised a relief for three weeks. Each day some orderly or other would come past, announcing that on the following night there was certain to be a relief. Sometimes it was the French who once more were to take over the sector. Again it was the British. British soldiers were reported to have been seen in a near-by town. And the platoon? First it was going to Zeebrugge to storm the Mole. Another time the platoon was to be disorganized and returned to the United States to be used as recruiting and training officers. Sometimes they were all to go on board ship as a mark of appreciation of their valor. This last always was circulated about by one of the older men who had seen service on the battleships. But one night, before dark, Lieutenant Bedford passed the word along that the men were to stand by, ready to be relieved. And in an hour’s time their entire equipment had been assembled, and they stood ready to depart. Slowly the hours passed, but about midnight the beat of the feet of heavily laden men, their curses and their comment to one another could be heard along the communication trench. Bedford, much excited, cautioned each man on sentry duty to look sharply, for it was during the time of relief that the enemy often chose to attack. Finally each of the old sentries had given his special orders to the new sentry, and had slung on his pack and assembled where the platoon stood waiting. They plodded off, sloshing through the mud, with now and again a man slipping off the duck boards and floundering hip-deep in the mud. The communication trench was tortuous and long. It was morning before the last man had got out of it and upon the road that took them on their way. The moon was full and round. Through the shapely leaves of the trees, set at regular intervals along the winding gravel road, it shone, divinely lighting up the way for the tired, mud-caked platoon that straggled along out and away from the front. For the first three miles the platoon had kept intact, but now, one by one, the weaker were dropping out to rest by the side of the road. Lieutenant Bedford and Sergeant Harriman, whose heavy marching equipment had been thrown on the company supply cart, marched gaily in front. There were no packs on their backs to bring their shoulder-blades together until they nearly touched; nor were there any straps to cut into the muscles of their shoulders until their arms were numb. Finally Hicks, with a nervous, infuriated, impotent “Oh, the hell with it,” dropped out and threw his equipment into the ditch. “Let the dirty dogs walk their heads off.” Two others dropped out with him and, contrary to orders, all three lighted cigarettes. Puffing away at his cigarette, one of the men began: “If I ever get out of this man’s war they’ll have to hunt me with cannons to get me in another.” “You tell ’em. They sure will. When I git out of this outfit I’m goin’ up into Montana and buy a ranch, and I’m goin’ to dig trenches and put up barbed wire and git me some guns and spit at the whole bunch of ’em.” “Why the hell do that? You can do all of that stuff here.” “Yeh, but I wouldn’t have no God-damned mail-order shavetails tellin’ me what to do and what not to do. That’s what I hate.” “Well, there won’t be any more wars after this one, anyway. This is the war to end war. After we lick these Boches everything will be all right.” Hicks rose, faintly nauseated. He flung his cigarette away, threw his equipment over his shoulders, and walked on. [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] When he arrived at the place where the platoon was to rest he felt quite giddy. He slipped his pack from his shoulders and leaned it against the side of the long, low, slatted bunk house. Of course there was a place there for him to sleep. But, somehow, he did not want to sleep. His stomach seemed about to tie itself into a knot, and he felt that this could be prevented by something hot to drink. He wondered where the galley was; the cooks were sure to have some hot coffee. A man passed, and Hicks asked him whether the cook wagons had yet arrived. “No, they haven’t. They never get here, you know. But there’s an old goof in that building over there that’s got some chocolate. Why don’t you get some?” Hicks started away in the direction the man had pointed. Sure enough, the place was crowded with soldiers, and many of them were drinking from thick mugs. Hicks edged toward the counter and asked for a drink. The Y. M. C. A. man filled a mug with hot, thin chocolate. It was the most pleasant sight Hicks had seen in months. He reached for it and was about to drink when something in the man’s eyes made him hesitate. “Well, we don’t give this chocolate away!” said the man, turning up a corner of his long, sallow face. “How much is it?” “It’s half a franc, that’s what it is.” Hicks was about to put down the mug of chocolate, when a soldier from the First Regular division stepped forward and offered him the money, and then faced the man behind the counter. “You’re a fine dirty slacker, you are. These men have been out in the trenches for heaven knows how long, and they come back dog-tired and hungry, and you refuse to give them a glass of your skimmed chocolate.” “Oh, never mind,” said Hicks. “You know the kind he is. Why talk to him?” He went back to the bunk house, found his bed, and crawled into it, not stopping to undress. For five hours the platoon had slept. When dawn, like a fifty-year-old virgin, was showing its hard, cold face, the men had stumbled down into the valley of Bois La Vec. After waiting outside for half an hour they were permitted to enter one of the long, low, vermin-infested bunk houses which lay in the valley. From their sleepless nights on sentry duty, their lack of food, and the long, punishing march from the trenches, they were thoroughly exhausted. Many of the men were in such a state of fatigue that they dropped on the straw beds which had been provided for the French army in 1914, without stopping to take off their muddy shoes. And they slept dreamlessly, sodden beings with senses so dulled they could not think of food. The mess sergeant had passed through the bunk house, loudly and virtuously asserting that the daily fare was to be had. Not one of the men had stirred. A large touring-car, its wind-shield placarded with two white stars cut in a field of red, drove down the valley along the gravel road, and turned toward the bunk houses where the soldiers who preferred sleep to food—and they had not tasted of food for twenty-four hours—were lying. The motor stopped, and a lieutenant, with a curled mustache, leaned a trifle forward from his seat beside the chauffeur and called: “Where is the sentry of this camp?” There was no answer. The lieutenant stepped out of the car and strode precisely and firmly toward the bunk house. He spoke loudly. “Where is the sentry of this camp?” Most of the men were too sleepy even to curse at the intruder. One or two voices impolitely commanded him to “shut up,” and one voice mumbled: “Where do you think you are at, anyway?” Enraged at this disrespect, the lieutenant decided not to leave until he had aroused some one. Sergeant Harriman, who for once had been forced to sleep with the common soldiers, awakened, and, seeing the lieutenant with the insignia upon his collar worn by officers attached to the General Staff, dived from his bunk like a jack-rabbit, saluting before his feet touched the ground. The lieutenant roared: “Where is your company commander?” “I’ll get him, sir!” And Sergeant Harriman scurried off. He returned three feet in rear and three inches to the left of Captain Powers. “How do you do, lieutenant?” Captain Powers rubbed his sleepy eyes. “Captain,” the lieutenant’s voice rang out, “Major-General Bumble will be ready to inspect your organization in”—he looked at his wrist-watch—“two hours.” “Very well, sir.” Captain Powers returned the lieutenant’s salute. He again rubbed his eyes and turned to Sergeant Harriman. “Harriman, have the men got up immediately, police up, and be ready to stand inspection in one hour and a half.” [43] [44] [45] [46] “Aye, aye, sir.” Sergeant Harriman saluted sharply. “And Harriman.” “Sir!” “Pass the word on to the sergeants of the other platoons. We officers have had a pretty hard night of it, and I am going to try and get some sleep before the general returns.” Sergeant Harriman ran through the bunk houses, informing the other platoon sergeants of their fortune. That finished, he returned to his own bunk house, and, starting along the row of sleeping men, unerringly picked the corporals of the squads and instructed them to awaken their squads. Soon the bunk house was filled with cries of: “Up you come, you dopes. Rise and shine.” “Is everybody up?” “Then fall in beside your bunks and answer to roll-call.” “Now,” said Sergeant Harriman, as he finished calling the platoon call, “you’ve got jist one hour to police up and be ready to stand general inspection. Snap into it.” Meeting between the platoon and general officers had been very limited; each man was overwhelmed with awe at the thought of a major-general inspecting him. The scene changed to one of frenzied activity. Dampened rags were rubbed over the stocks of the rifles; the rifle bores were cleaned, their chambers, trigger-guard, and other metal pieces were meticulously brushed; knives were put into use to scrape off the mud from the shoes and clothing; the blankets were stripped from the bunks and rolled into neat packs; water was found and stubbles of beard disappeared magically under the sharp edges of razors, or else were hidden by heavy coatings of talcum powder. An hour afterward the platoon was in line in front of the bunk house. Clicking his heels sharply, for he wore barracks shoes because his tender feet were unable to stand the heavy hobnails issued to the soldier, Sergeant Harriman halted before his command. “Ha-right, dress.” His...