Chapter VII: Part THREE: Machines I (2)

They lay down on the grassy bank that sloped from the road to the pond. The road was hidden from them by the tall reeds through which the wind lisped softly. Overhead huge white cumulus clouds, piled tier on tier like fantastic galleons in full sail, floated, changing slowly in a greenish sky. The reflection of clouds in the silvery glisten of the pond's surface was broken by clumps of grasses and bits of floating weeds. They lay on their backs for some time before they started taking their clothes off, looking up at the sky, that seemed vast and free, like the ocean, vaster and freer than the ocean.

“Sarge says a delousin' machine's comin' through this way soon.”

“We need it, Chris.”

Andrews pulled his clothes off slowly.

“It's great to feel the sun and the wind on your body, isn't it, Chris?”

Andrews walked towards the pond and lay flat on his belly on the fine soft grass near the edge.

“It's great to have your body there, isn't it?” he said in a dreamy voice. “Your skin's so soft and supple, and nothing in the world has the feel a muscle has.... Gee, I don't know what I'd do without my body.”

Chrisfield laughed.

“Look how ma ole ankle's raised.... Found any cooties yet?” he said.

“I'll try and drown 'em,” said Andrews. “Chris, come away from those stinking uniforms and you'll feel like a human being with the sun on your flesh instead of like a lousy soldier.”

“Hello, boys,” came a high-pitched voice unexpectedly. A “Y” man with sharp nose and chin had come up behind them.

“Hello,” said Chrisfield sullenly, limping towards the water.

“Want the soap?” said Andrews.

“Going to take a swim, boys?” asked the “Y” man. Then he added in a tone of conviction, “That's great.”

“Better come in, too,” said Andrews.

“Thanks, thanks.... Say, if you don't mind my suggestion, why don't you fellers get under the water.... You see there's two French girls looking at you from the road.” The “Y” man giggled faintly.

“They don't mind,” said Andrews soaping, himself vigorously.

“Ah reckon they lahk it,” said Chrisfield.

“I know they haven't any morals.... But still.”

“And why should they not look at us? Maybe there won't be many people who get a chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever seen what a little splinter of a shell does to a feller's body?” asked Andrews savagely. He splashed into the shallow water and swam towards the middle of the pond.

“Ye might ask 'em to come down and help us pick the cooties off,” said Chrisfield and followed in Andrews's wake. In the middle he lay on a sand bank in the warm shallow water and looked back at the “Y” man, who still stood on the bank. Behind him were other men undressing, and soon the grassy slope was filled with naked men and yellowish grey underclothes, and many dark heads and gleaming backs were bobbing up and down in the water. When he came out, he found Andrews sitting cross-legged near his clothes. He reached for his shirt and drew it on him.

“God, I can't make up my mind to put the damn thing on again,” said Andrews in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself; “I feel so clean and free. It's like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again.... I think I'll just walk off naked across the fields.”

“D'you call serving your country slavery, my friend?” The “Y” man, who had been roaming among the bathers, his neat uniform and well-polished boots and puttees contrasting strangely with the mud-clotted, sweat-soaked clothing of the men about him, sat down on the grass beside Andrews.

“You're goddam right I do.”

“You'll get into trouble, my boy, if you talk that way,” said the “Y” man in a cautious voice.

“Well, what is your definition of slavery?”

“You must remember that you are a voluntary worker in the cause of democracy.... You're doing this so that your children will be able to live peaceful....”

“Ever shot a man?”

“No.... No, of course not, but I'd have enlisted, really I would. Only my eyes are weak.”

“I guess so,” said Andrews under his breath. “Remember that your women folks, your sisters and sweethearts and mothers, are praying for you at this instant.”

“I wish somebody'd pray me into a clean shirt,” said Andrews, starting to get into his clothes. “How long have you been over here?”

“Just three months.” The man's sallow face, with its pinched nose and chin lit up. “But, boys, those three months have been worth all the other years of my min--” he caught himself--“life.... I've heard the great heart of America beat. O boys, never forget that you are in a great Christian undertaking.”

“Come on, Chris, let's beat it.” They left the “Y” man wandering among the men along the bank of the pond, to which the reflection of the greenish silvery sky and the great piled white clouds gave all the free immensity of space. From the road they could still hear his high pitched voice.

“And that's what'll survive you and me,” said Andrews.

“Say, Andy, you sure can talk to them guys,” said Chris admiringly.

“What's the use of talking? God, there's a bit of honeysuckle still in bloom. Doesn't that smell like home to you, Chris?”

“Say, how much do they pay those 'Y' men, Andy?”

“Damned if I know.”

They were just in time to fall into line for mess. In the line everyone was talking and laughing, enlivened by the smell of food and the tinkle of mess-kits. Near the field kitchen Chrisfield saw Sergeant Anderson talking with Higgins, his own sergeant. They were laughing together, and he heard Anderson's big voice saying jovially, “We've pulled through this time, Higgins.... I guess we will again.” The two sergeants looked at each other and cast a paternal, condescending glance over their men and laughed aloud.

Chrisfield felt powerless as an ox under the yoke. All he could do was work and strain and stand at attention, while that white-faced Anderson could lounge about as if he owned the earth and laugh importantly like that. He held out his plate. The K.P. splashed the meat and gravy into it. He leaned against the tar-papered wall of the shack, eating his food and looking sullenly over at the two sergeants, who laughed and talked with an air of leisure while the men of their two companies ate hurriedly as dogs all round them.

Chrisfield glanced suddenly at Anderson, who sat in the grass at the back of the house, looking out over the wheat fields, while the smoke of a cigarette rose in spirals about his face and his fair hair. He looked peaceful, almost happy. Chrisfield clenched his fists and felt the hatred of that other man rising stingingly within him.

“Guess Ah got a bit of the devil in me,” he thought.

The windows were so near the grass that the faint light had a greenish color in the shack where the company was quartered. It gave men's faces, tanned as they were, the sickly look of people who work in offices, when they lay on their blankets in the bunks made of chicken wire, stretched across mouldy scantlings. Swallows had made their nests in the peak of the roof, and their droppings made white dobs and blotches on the floorboards in the alley between the bunks, where a few patches of yellow grass had not yet been completely crushed away by footsteps. Now that the shack was empty, Chrisfield could hear plainly the peep-peep of the little swallows in their mud nests. He sat quiet on the end of one of the bunks, looking out of the open door at the blue shadows that were beginning to lengthen on the grass of the meadow behind. His hands, that had got to be the color of terra cotta, hung idly between his legs. He was whistling faintly. His eyes, in their long black eyelashes, were fixed on the distance, though he was not thinking. He felt a comfortable unexpressed well-being all over him. It was pleasant to be alone in the barracks like this, when the other men were out at grenade practice. There was no chance of anyone shouting orders at him.

A warm drowsiness came over him. From the field kitchen alongside came the voice of a man singing:

“O my girl's a lulu, every inch a lulu,
Is Lulu, that pretty lil' girl o' mi-ine.”

In their mud nests the young swallows twittered faintly overhead. Now and then there was a beat of wings and a big swallow skimmed into the shack. Chrisfield's cheeks began to feel very softly flushed. His head drooped over on his chest. Outside the cook was singing over and over again in a low voice, amid a faint clatter of pans:

“O my girl's a lulu, every inch a lulu,
Is Lulu, that pretty lil' girl o' mi-ine.”

Chrisfield fell asleep.

He woke up with a start. The shack was almost dark. A tall man stood out black against the bright oblong of the door.

“What are you doing here?” said a deep snarling voice.

Chrisfield's eyes blinked. Automatically he got to his feet; it might be an officer. His eyes focussed suddenly. It was Anderson's face that was between him and the light. In the greenish obscurity the skin looked chalk-white in contrast to the heavy eyebrows that met over the nose and the dark stubble on the chin.

“How is it you ain't out with the company?”

“Ah'm barracks guard,” muttered Chrisfield. He could feel the blood beating in his wrists and temples, stinging his eyes like fire. He was staring at the floor in front of Anderson's feet.

“Orders was all the companies was to go out an' not leave any guard.”

“Ah!'

“We'll see about that when Sergeant Higgins comes in. Is this place tidy?”

“You say Ah'm a goddamed liar, do ye?” Chrisfield felt suddenly cool and joyous. He felt anger taking possession of him. He seemed to be standing somewhere away from himself watching himself get angry.

“This place has got to be cleaned up.... That damn General may come back to look over quarters,” went on Anderson coolly.

“You call me a goddam liar,” said Chrisfield again, putting as much insolence as he could summon into his voice. “Ah guess you doan' remember me.”

“Yes, I know, you're the guy tried to run a knife into me once,” said Anderson coolly, squaring his shoulders. “I guess you've learned a little discipline by this time. Anyhow you've got to clean this place up. God, they haven't even brushed the birds' nests down! Must be some company!” said Anderson with a half laugh.

“Ah ain't agoin' to neither, fur you.”

“Look here, you do it or it'll be the worse for you,” shouted the sergeant in his deep rasping voice.

“If ever Ah gits out o' the army Ah'm goin' to shoot you. You've picked on me enough.” Chrisfield spoke slowly, as coolly as Anderson.

“Well, we'll see what a court-martial has to say to that.”

“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what ye do.”

Sergeant Anderson turned on his heel and went out, twisting the corner button of his tunic in his big fingers. Already the sound of tramping feet was heard and the shouted order, “Dis-missed.” Then men crowded into the shack, laughing and talking. Chrisfield sat still on the end of the bunk, looking at the bright oblong of the door. Outside he saw Anderson talking to Sergeant Higgins. They shook hands, and Anderson disappeared. Chrisfield heard Sergeant Higgins call after him.

“I guess the next time I see you I'll have to put my heels together an' salute.”

Andersen's booming laugh faded as he walked away.

Sergeant Higgins came into the shack and walked straight up to Chrisfield, saying in a hard official voice:

“You're under arrest.... Small, guard this man; get your gun and cartridge belt. I'll relieve you so you can get mess.”

He went out. Everyone's eyes were turned curiously on Chrisfield. Small, a red-faced man with a long nose that hung down over his upper lip, shuffled sheepishly over to his place beside Chrisfield's cot and let the butt of his rifle come down with a bang on the floor. Somebody laughed. Andrews walked up to them, a look of trouble in his blue eyes and in the lines of his lean tanned cheeks.

“What's the matter, Chris?” he asked in a low voice.

“Tol' that bastard Ah didn't give a hoot in hell what he did,” said Chrisfield in a broken voice.

“Say, Andy, I don't think I ought ter let anybody talk to him,” said Small in an apologetic tone. “I don't see why Sarge always gives me all his dirty work.”

Andrews walked off without replying.

“Never mind, Chris; they won't do nothin' to ye,” said Jenkins, grinning at him good-naturedly from the door.

“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what they do,” said Chrisfield again.

He lay back in his bunk and looked at the ceiling. The barracks was full of a bustle of cleaning up. Judkins was sweeping the floor with a broom made of dry sticks. Another man was knocking down the swallows' nests with a bayonet. The mud nests crumbled and fell on the floor and the bunks, filling the air with a flutter of feathers and a smell of birdlime. The little naked bodies, with their orange bills too big for them, gave a soft plump when they hit the boards of the floor, where they lay giving faint gasping squeaks. Meanwhile, with shrill little cries, the big swallows flew back and forth in the shanty, now and then striking the low roof.

“Say, pick 'em up, can't yer?” said Small. Judkins was sweeping the little gasping bodies out among the dust and dirt.

A stoutish man stooped and picked the little birds up one by one, puckering his lips into an expression of tenderness. He made his two hands into a nest-shaped hollow, out of which stretched the long necks and the gaping orange mouths. Andrews ran into him at the door.

“Hello, Dad,” he said. “What the hell?”

“I just picked these up.”

“So they couldn't let the poor little devils stay there? God! it looks to me as if they went out of their way to give pain to everything, bird, beast or man.”

“War ain't no picnic,” said Judkins.

“Well, God damn it, isn't that a reason for not going out of your way to raise more hell with people's feelings than you have to?”

A face with peaked chin and nose on which was stretched a parchment-colored skin appeared in the door.

“Hello, boys,” said the “Y” man. “I just thought I'd tell you I'm going to open the canteen tomorrow, in the last shack on the Beaucourt road. There'll be chocolate, ciggies, soap, and everything.”

Everybody cheered. The “Y” man beamed.

His eye lit on the little birds in Dad's hands.

“How could you?” he said. “An American soldier being deliberately cruel. I would never have believed it.”

“Ye've got somethin' to learn,” muttered Dad, waddling out into the twilight on his bandy legs.

Chrisfield had been watching the scene at the door with unseeing eyes. A terrified nervousness that he tried to beat off had come over him. It was useless to repeat to himself again and again that he didn't give a damn; the prospect of being brought up alone before all those officers, of being cross-questioned by those curt voices, frightened him. He would rather have been lashed. Whatever was he to say, he kept asking himself; he would get mixed up or say things he didn't mean to, or else he wouldn't be able to get a word out at all. If only Andy could go up with him, Andy was educated, like the officers were; he had more learning than the whole shooting-match put together. He'd be able to defend himself, and defend his friends, too, if only they'd let him.

“I felt just like those little birds that time they got the bead on our trench at Boticourt,” said Jenkins, laughing.

Chrisfield listened to the talk about him as if from another world. Already he was cut off from his outfit. He'd disappear and they'd never know or care what became of him.

The mess-call blew and the men filed out. He could hear their talk outside, and the sound of their mess-kits as they opened them. He lay on his bunk staring up into the dark. A faint blue light still came from outside, giving a curious purple color to Small's red face and long drooping nose at the end of which hung a glistening drop of moisture.

Chrisfield found Andrews washing a shirt in the brook that flowed through the ruins of the village the other side of the road from the buildings where the division was quartered. The blue sky flicked with pinkish-white clouds gave a shimmer of blue and lavender and white to the bright water. At the bottom could be seen battered helmets and bits of equipment and tin cans that had once held meat. Andrews turned his head; he had a smudge of mud down his nose and soapsuds on his chin.

“Hello, Chris,” he said, looking him in the eyes with his sparkling blue eyes, “how's things?” There was a faint anxious frown on his forehead.

“Two-thirds of one month's pay an' confined to quarters,” said Chrisfield cheerfully.

“Gee, they were easy.”

“Um-hum, said Ah was a good shot an' all that, so they'd let me off this time.”

Andrews started scrubbing at his shirt again.

“I've got this shirt so full of mud I don't think I ever will get it clean,” he said.

“Move ye ole hide away, Andy. Ah'll wash it. You ain't no good for nothin'.”

“Hell no, I'll do it.”

“Move ye hide out of there.”

“Thanks awfully.”

Andrews got to his feet and wiped the mud off his nose with his bare forearm.

“Ah'm goin' to shoot that bastard,” said Chrisfield, scrubbing at the shirt.

“Don't be an ass, Chris.”

“Ah swear to God Ah am.”

“What's the use of getting all wrought up. The thing's over. You'll probably never see him again.”

“Ah ain't all het up.... Ah'm goin' to do it though.” He wrung the shirt out carefully and flipped Andrews in the face with it. “There ye are,” he said.

“You're a good fellow, Chris, even if you are an ass.”

“Tell me we're going into the line in a day or two.”

“There's been a devil of a lot of artillery going up the road; French, British, every old kind.”

“Tell me they's raisin' hell in the Oregon forest.”

They walked slowly across the road. A motorcycle despatch-rider whizzed past them.

“It's them guys has the fun,” said Chrisfield.

“I don't believe anybody has much.”

“What about the officers?”

“They're too busy feeling important to have a real hell of a time.”

The hard cold rain beat like a lash in his; face. There was no light anywhere and no sound but the hiss of the rain in the grass. His eyes strained to see through the dark until red and yellow blotches danced before them. He walked very slowly and carefully, holding something very gently in his hand under his raincoat. He felt himself full of a strange subdued fury; he seemed to be walking behind himself spying on his own actions, and what he saw made him feel joyously happy, made him want to sing.

He turned so that the rain beat against his cheek. Under his helmet he felt his hair full of sweat that ran with the rain down his glowing face. His fingers clutched very carefully the smooth stick he had in his hand.

He stopped and shut his eyes for a moment; through the hiss of the rain he had heard a sound of men talking in one of the shanties. When he shut his eyes he saw the white face of Anderson before him, with its unshaven chin and the eyebrows that met across the nose.

Suddenly he felt the wall of a house in front of him. He put out his hand. His hand jerked back from the rough wet feel of the tar paper, as if it had touched something dead. He groped along the wall, stepping very cautiously. He felt as he had felt reconnoitering in the Bringy Wood. Phrases came to his mind as they had then. Without thinking what they meant, the words Make the world safe for Democracy formed themselves in his head. They were very comforting. They occupied his thoughts. He said them to himself again and again. Meanwhile his free hand was fumbling very carefully with the fastening that held the wooden shutter over a window. The shutter opened a very little, creaking loudly, louder than the patter of rain on the roof of the shack. A stream of water from the roof was pouring into his face.

Suddenly a beam of light transformed everything, cutting the darkness in two. The rain glittered like a bead curtain. Chrisfield was looking into a little room where a lamp was burning. At a table covered with printed blanks of different size sat a corporal; behind him was a bunk and a pile of equipment. The corporal was reading a magazine. Chrisfield looked at him a long time; his fingers were tight about the smooth stick. There was no one else in the room.

A sort of panic seized Chrisfield; he strode away noisily from the window and pushed open the door of the shack.

“Where's Sergeant Anderson?” he asked in a breathless voice of the first man he saw.

“Corp's there if it's anything important,” said the man. “Anderson's gone to an O. T. C. Left day before yesterday.”

Chrisfield was out in the rain again. It was beating straight in his face, so that his eyes were full of water. He was trembling. He had suddenly become terrified. The smooth stick he held seemed to burn him. He was straining his ears for an explosion. Walking straight before him down the road, he went faster and faster as if trying to escape from it. He stumbled on a pile of stones. Automatically he pulled the string out of the grenade and threw it far from him.

There was a minute's pause.

Red flame spurted in the middle of the wheatfield. He felt the sharp crash in his eardrums.

He walked fast through the rain. Behind him, at the door of the shack, he could hear excited voices. He walked recklessly on, the rain blinding him. When he finally stepped into the light he was so dazzled he could not see who was in the wine shop.

“Well, I'll be damned, Chris,” said Andrews's voice. Chrisfield blinked the rain out of his lashes. Andrews sat writing with a pile of papers before him and a bottle of champagne. It seemed to Chrisfield to soothe his nerves to hear Andy's voice. He wished he would go on talking a long time without a pause.

“If you aren't the crowning idiot of the ages,” Andrews went on in a low voice. He took Chrisfield by the arm and led him into the little back room, where was a high bed with a brown coverlet and a big kitchen table on which were the remnants of a meal.

“What's the matter? Your arm's trembling like the devil. But why.... O pardon, Crimpette. C'est un ami.... You know Crimpette, don't you?” He pointed to a youngish woman who had just appeared from behind the bed. She had a flabby rosy face and violet circles under her eyes, dark as if they'd been made by blows, and untidy hair. A dirty grey muslin dress with half the hooks off held in badly her large breasts and flabby figure. Chrisfield looked at her greedily, feeling his furious irritation flame into one desire.

“What's the matter with you, Chris? You're crazy to break out of quarters this way?”

“Say, Andy, git out o' here. Ah ain't your sort anyway.... Git out o' here.”

“You're a wild man. I'll grant you that.... But I'd just as soon be your sort as anyone else's.... Have a drink.”

“Not now.”

Andrews sat down with his bottle and his papers, pushing away the broken plates full of stale food to make a place on the greasy table. He took a gulp out of the bottle, that made him cough, then put the end of his pencil in his mouth and stared gravely at the paper.

“No, I'm your sort, Chris,” he said over his shoulder, “only they've tamed me. O God, how tame I am.”

Chrisfield did not listen to what he was saying. He stood in front of the woman, staring in her face. She looked at him in a stupid frightened way. He felt in his pockets for some money. As he had just been paid he had a fifty-franc note. He spread it out carefully before her. Her eyes glistened. The pupils seemed to grow smaller as they fastened on the bit of daintily colored paper. He crumpled it up suddenly in his fist and shoved it down between her breasts.

Some time later Chrisfield sat down in front of Andrews. He still had his wet slicker on.

“Ah guess you think Ah'm a swine,” he said in his normal voice. “Ah guess you're about right.”

“No, I don't,” said Andrews. Something made him put his hand on Chrisfield's hand that lay on the table. It had a feeling of cool health.

“Say, why were you trembling so when you came in here? You seem all right now.”

“Oh, Ah dunno,'” said Chrisfield in a soft resonant voice.

They were silent for a long while. They could hear the woman's footsteps going and coming behind them.

“Let's go home,” said Chrisfield.

“All right.... Bonsoir, Crimpette.”

Outside the rain had stopped. A stormy wind had torn the clouds to rags. Here and there clusters of stars showed through. They splashed merrily through the puddles. But here and there reflected a patch of stars when the wind was not ruffling them.

“Christ, Ah wish Ah was like you, Andy,” said Chrisfield.

“You don't want to be like me, Chris. I'm no sort of a person at all. I'm tame. O you don't know how damn tame I am.”

“Learnin' sure do help a feller to git along in the world.”

“Yes, but what's the use of getting along if you haven't any world to get along in? Chris, I belong to a crowd that just fakes learning. I guess the best thing that can happen to us is to get killed in this butchery. We're a tame generation.... It's you that it matters to kill.”

“Ah ain't no good for anythin'.... Ah doan give a damn.... Lawsee, Ah feel sleepy.”

As they slipped in the door of their quarters, the sergeant looked at Chrisfield searchingly. Andrews spoke up at once.

“There's some rumors going on at the latrine, Sarge. The fellows from the Thirty-second say we're going to march into hell's halfacre about Thursday.”

“A lot they know about it.”

“That's the latest edition of the latrine news.”

“The hell it is! Well, d'you want to know something, Andrews.... It'll be before Thursday, or I'm a Dutchman.”

Sergeant Higgins put on a great air of mystery.

Chrisfield went to his bunk, undressed quietly and climbed into his blankets. He stretched his arms languidly a couple of times, and while Andrews was still talking to the sergeant, fell asleep.

IV

The moon lay among clouds on the horizon, like a big red pumpkin among its leaves.

Chrisfield squinted at it through the boughs of the apple trees laden with apples that gave a winey fragrance to the crisp air. He was sitting on the ground, his legs stretched limply before him, leaning against the rough trunk of an apple tree. Opposite him, leaning against another tree, was the square form, surmounted by a large long-jawed face, of Judkins. Between them lay two empty cognac bottles. All about them was the rustling orchard, with its crooked twigs that made a crackling sound rubbing together in the gusts of the autumn wind, that came heavy with a smell of damp woods and of rotting fruits and of all the ferment of the overripe fields. Chrisfield felt it stirring the moist hair on his forehead and through the buzzing haze of the cognac heard the plunk, plunk, plunk of apples dropping that followed each gust, and the twanging of night insects, and, far in the distance, the endless rumble of guns, like tomtoms beaten for a dance.

“Ye heard what the Colonel said, didn't ye?” said Judkins in a voice hoarse from too much drink.

Chrisfield belched and nodded his head vaguely. He remembered Andrews's white fury after the men had been dismissed, how he had sat down on the end of a log by the field kitchen, staring at the patch of earth he beat into mud with the toe of his boot.

“Then,” went on Judkins, trying to imitate the Colonel's solemn efficient voice, “'On the subject of prisoners'”--he hiccoughed and made a limp gesture with his hand--“'On the subject of prisoners, well, I'll leave that to you, but juss remember... juss remember what the Huns did to Belgium, an' I might add that we have barely enough emergency rations as it is, and the more prisoners you have the less you fellers'll git to eat.'”

“That's what he said, Judkie; that's what he said.”

“'An the more prisoners ye have, the less youse'll git to eat,'” chanted Judkins, making a triumphal flourish with his hand.

Chrisfield groped for the cognac bottle; it was empty; he waved it in the air a minute and then threw it into the tree opposite him. A shower of little apples fell about Judkins's head. He got unsteadily to his feet.

“I tell you, fellers,” he said, “war ain't no picnic.”

Chrisfield stood up and grabbed at an apple. His teeth crunched into it.

“Sweet,” he said.

“Sweet, nauthin',” mumbled Judkins, “war ain't no picnic.... I tell you, buddy, if you take any prisoners”--he hiccoughed--“after what the Colonel said, I'll lick the spots out of you, by God I will.... Rip up their guts that's all, like they was dummies. Rip up their guts.” His voice suddenly changed to one of childish dismay. “Gee, Chris, I'm going to be sick,” he whispered.

“Look out,” said Chrisfield, pushing him away. Judkins leaned against a tree and vomited.

The full moon had risen above the clouds and filled the apple orchard with chilly golden light that cast a fantastic shadow pattern of interlaced twigs and branches upon the bare ground littered with apples. The sound of the guns had grown nearer. There were loud eager rumbles as of bowls being rolled very hard on a bowling alley, combined with a continuous roar like sheets of iron being shaken.

“Ah bet it's hell out there,” said Chrisfield.

“I feel better,” said Judkins. “Let's go get some more cognac.”

“Ah'm hungry,” said Chrisfield. “Let's go an' get that ole woman to cook us some aigs.”

“Too damn late,” growled Judkins.

“How the hell late is it?”

“Dunno, I sold my watch.”

They were walking at random through the orchard. They came to a field full of big pumpkins that gleamed in the moonlight and cast shadows black as holes. In the distance they could see wooded hills.

Chrisfield picked up a medium-sized pumpkin and threw it as hard as he could into the air. It split into three when it landed with a thud on the ground, and the moist yellow seeds spilled out.

“Some strong man, you are,” said Judkins, tossing up a bigger one.

“Say, there's a farmhouse, maybe we could get some aigs from the hen-roost.”

“Hell of a lot of hens....”

At that moment the crowing of a rooster came across the silent fields. They ran towards the dark farm buildings.

“Look out, there may be officers quartered there.”

They walked cautiously round the square, silent group of buildings. There were no lights. The big wooden door of the court pushed open easily, without creaking. On the roof of the barn the pigeon-cot was etched dark against the disc of the moon. A warm smell of stables blew in their faces as the two men tiptoed into the manure-littered farmyard. Under one of the sheds they found a table on which a great many pears were set to ripen. Chrisfield put his teeth into one. The rich sweet juice ran down his chin. He ate the pear quickly and greedily, and then bit into another.

“Fill yer pockets with 'em,” whispered Judkins.

“They might ketch us.”

“Ketch us, hell. We'll be goin' into the offensive in a day or two.”

“Ah sure would like to git some aigs.”

Chrisfield pushed open the door of one of the barns. A smell of creamy milk and cheeses filled his nostrils.

“Come here,” he whispered. “Want some cheese?”

A lot of cheeses ranged on a board shone silver in the moonlight that came in through the open door.

“Hell, no, ain't fit te eat,” said Judkins, pushing his heavy fist into one of the new soft cheeses.

“Doan do that.”

“Well, ain't we saved 'em from the Huns?”

“But, hell.”

“War ain't no picnic, that's all,” said Judkins.

In the next door they found chickens roosting in a small room with straw on the floor. The chickens ruffled their feathers and made a muffled squeaking as they slept.

Suddenly there was a loud squawking and all the chickens were cackling with terror.

“Beat it,” muttered Judkins, running for the gate of the farmyard.

There were shrill cries of women in the house. A voice shrieking, “C'est les Boches, C'est les Boches,” rose above the cackling of chickens and the clamor of guinea-hens. As they ran, they heard the rasping cries of a woman in hysterics, rending the rustling autumn night.

“God damn,” said Judkins breathless, “they ain't got no right, those frogs ain't, to carry on like that.”

They ducked into the orchard again. Above the squawking of the chicken Judkins still held, swinging it by its legs, Chrisfield could hear the woman's voice shrieking. Judkins dexterously wrung the chicken's neck. Crushing the apples underfoot they strode fast through the orchard. The voice faded into the distance until it could not be heard above the sound of the guns.

“Gee, Ah'm kind o' cut up 'bout that lady,” said Chrisfield.

“Well, ain't we saved her from the Huns?”

“Andy don't think so.”

“Well, if you want to know what I think about that guy Andy I don't think much of him. I think he's yaller, that's all,” said Judkins.

“No, he ain't.”

“I heard the lootenant say so. He's a goddam yeller dawg.”

Chrisfield swore sullenly.

“Well, you juss wait 'n see. I tell you, buddy, war ain't no picnic.”

“What the hell are we goin' to do with that chicken?” said Judkins.

“You remember what happened to Eddie White?”

“Hell, we'd better leave it here.”

Judkins swung the chicken by its neck round his head and threw it as hard as he could into the bushes.

They were walking along the road between chestnut trees that led to their village. It was dark except for irregular patches of bright moonlight in the centre that lay white as milk among the indentated shadows of the leaves. All about them rose a cool scent of woods, of ripe fruits and of decaying leaves, of the ferment of the autumn countryside.

The lieutenant sat at a table in the sun, in the village street outside the company office. In front of him sparkled piles of money and daintily tinted banknotes. Beside him stood Sergeant Higgins with an air of solemnity and the second sergeant and the corporal. The men stood in line and as each came before the table he saluted with deference, received his money and walked away with a self-conscious air. A few villagers looked on from the small windows with grey frames of their rambling whitewashed houses. In the ruddy sunshine the line of men cast an irregular blue-violet shadow, like a gigantic centipede, on the yellow gravel road.

From the table by the window of the cafe of “Nos Braves Poilus” where Small and Judkins and Chrisfield had established themselves with their pay crisp in their pockets, they could see the little front garden of the house across the road, where, behind a hedge of orange marigolds, Andrews sat on the doorstep talking to an old woman hunched on a low chair in the sun just inside the door, who leant her small white head over towards his yellow one.

“There ye are,” said Judkins in a solemn tone. “He don't even go after his pay. That guy thinks he's the whole show, he does.”

Chrisfield flushed, but said nothing. “He don't do nothing all day long but talk to that ole lady,” said Small with a grin. “Guess she reminds him of his mother, or somethin'.”

“He always does go round with the frogs all he can. Looks to me like he'd rather have a drink with a frog than with an American.”

“Reckon he wants to learn their language,” said Small. “He won't never come to much in this army, that's what I'm telling yer,” said Judkins.

The little houses across the way had flushed red with the sunset. Andrews got to his feet slowly and languidly and held out his hand to the old woman. She stood up, a small tottering figure in a black silk shawl. He leaned over towards her and she kissed both his cheeks vigorously several times. He walked down the road towards the billets, with his fatigue cap in his hand, looking at the ground.

“He's got a flower behind his ear, like a cigarette,” said Judkins, with a disgusted snort.

“Well, I guess we'd better go,” said Small. “We got to be in quarters at six.”

They were silent a moment. In the distance the guns kept up a continual tomtom sound.

“Guess we'll be in that soon,” said Small.

Chrisfield felt a chill go down his spine. He moistened his lips with his tongue.

“Guess it's hell out there,” said Judkins. “War ain't no picnic.”

“Ah doan give a hoot in hell,” said Chrisfield.

The men were lined up in the village street with their packs on, waiting for the order to move. Thin wreaths of white mist still lingered in the trees and over the little garden plots. The sun had not yet risen, but ranks of clouds in the pale blue sky overhead were brilliant with crimson and gold. The men stood in an irregular line, bent over a little by the weight of their equipment, moving back and forth, stamping their feet and beating their arms together, their noses and ears red from the chill of the morning. The haze of their breath rose above their heads.

Down the misty road a drab-colored limousine appeared, running slowly. It stopped in front of the line of men. The lieutenant came hurriedly out of the house opposite, drawing on a pair of gloves. The men standing in line looked curiously at the limousine. They could see that two of the tires were flat and that the glass was broken. There were scratches on the drab paint and in the door three long jagged holes that obliterated the number. A little murmur went down the line of men. The door opened with difficulty, and a major in a light buff-colored coat stumbled out. One arm, wrapped in bloody bandages, was held in a sling made of a handkerchief. His face was white and drawn into a stiff mask with pain. The lieutenant saluted.

“For God's sake where's a repair station?” he asked in a loud shaky voice.

“There's none in this village, Major.”

“Where the hell is there one?”

“I don't know,” said the lieutenant in a humble tone.

“Why the hell don't you know? This organization's rotten, no good.... Major Stanley's just been killed. What the hell's the name of this village?”

“Thiocourt.”

“Where the hell's that?”

The chauffeur had leaned out. He had no cap and his hair was full of dust.

“You see, Lootenant, we wants to get to Chalons--”

“Yes, that's it. Chalons sur...Chalons-sur-Marne,” said the Major.

“The billeting officer has a map,” said the lieutenant, “last house to the left.”

“O let's go there quick,” said the major. He fumbled with the fastening of the door.

The lieutenant opened it for him.

As he opened the door, the men nearest had a glimpse of the interior of the car. On the far side was a long object huddled in blankets, propped up on the seat.

Before he got in the major leaned over and pulled a woollen rug out, holding it away from him with his one good arm. The car moved off slowly, and all down the village street the men, lined up waiting for orders, stared curiously at the three jagged holes in the door.

The lieutenant looked at the rug that lay in the middle of the road. He touched it with his foot. It was soaked with blood that in places had dried into clots.

The lieutenant and the men of his company looked at it in silence. The sun had risen and shone on the roofs of the little whitewashed houses behind them. Far down the road a regiment had begun to move.

V

At the brow of the hill they rested. Chrisfield sat on the red clay bank and looked about him, his rifle between his knees. In front of him on the side of the road was a French burying ground, where the little wooden crosses, tilting in every direction, stood up against the sky, and the bead wreaths glistened in the warm sunlight. All down the road as far as he could see was a long drab worm, broken in places by strings of motor trucks, a drab worm that wriggled down the slope, through the roofless shell of the village and up into the shattered woods on the crest of the next hills. Chrisfield strained his eyes to see the hills beyond. They lay blue and very peaceful in the moon mist. The river glittered about the piers of the wrecked stone bridge, and disappeared between rows of yellow poplars. Somewhere in the valley a big gun fired. The shell shrieked into the distance, towards the blue, peaceful hills.

Chrisfield's regiment was moving again. The men, their feet slipping in the clayey mud, went downhill with long strides, the straps of their packs tugging at their shoulders.

“Isn't this great country?” said Andrews, who marched beside him.

“Ah'd liever be at an O. T. C. like that bastard Anderson.”

“Oh, to hell with that,” said Andrews. He still had a big faded orange marigold in one of the buttonholes of his soiled tunic. He walked with his nose in the air and his nostrils dilated, enjoying the tang of the autumnal sunlight.

Chrisfield took the cigarette, that had gone out half-smoked, from his mouth and spat savagely at the heels of the man in front of him.

“This ain't no life for a white man,” he said.

“I'd rather be this than... than that,” said Andrews bitterly. He tossed his head in the direction of a staff car full of officers that was stalled at the side of the road. They were drinking something out of a thermos bottle that they passed round with the air of Sunday excursionists. They waved, with a conscious relaxation of discipline, at the men as they passed. One, a little lieutenant with a black mustache with pointed ends, kept crying: “They're running like rabbits, fellers; they're running like rabbits.” A wavering half-cheer would come from the column now and then where it was passing the staff car.

The big gun fired again. Chrisfield was near it this time and felt the concussion like a blow in the head.

“Some baby,” said the man behind him.

Someone was singing:

“Good morning, mister Zip Zip Zip,
With your hair cut just as short as,
With your hair cut just as short as,
With your hair cut just as short as mi-ine.”

Everybody took it up. Their steps rang in rhythm in the paved street that zigzagged among the smashed houses of the village. Ambulances passed them, big trucks full of huddled men with grey faces, from which came a smell of sweat and blood and carbolic. Somebody went on:

“O ashes to ashes
An' dust to dust...”

“Can that,” cried Judkins, “it ain't lucky.”

But everybody had taken up the song. Chrisfield noticed that Andrews's eyes were sparkling. “If he ain't the damnedest,” he thought to himself. But he shouted at the top of his lungs with the rest:

“O ashes to ashes
An' dust to dust;
If the gasbombs don't get yer
The eighty-eights must.”

They were climbing the hill again. The road was worn into deep ruts and there were many shell holes, full of muddy water, into which their feet slipped. The woods began, a shattered skeleton of woods, full of old artillery emplacements and dugouts, where torn camouflage fluttered from splintered trees. The ground and the road were littered with tin cans and brass shell-cases. Along both sides of the road the trees were festooned, as with creepers, with strand upon strand of telephone wire.

When next they stopped Chrisfield was on the crest of the hill beside a battery of French seventy-fives. He looked curiously at the Frenchmen, who sat about on logs in their pink and blue shirtsleeves playing cards and smoking. Their gestures irritated him.

“Say, tell 'em we're advancin',” he said to Andrews.

“Are we?” said Andrews. “All right.... Dites-donc, les Boches courent-ils comme des lapins?” he shouted.

One of the men turned his head and laughed.

“He says they've been running that way for four years,” said Andrews. He slipped his pack off, sat down on it, and fished for a cigarette. Chrisfield took off his helmet and rubbed a muddy hand through his hair. He took a bite of chewing tobacco and sat with his hands clasped over his knees.

“How the hell long are we going to wait this time?” he muttered. The shadows of the tangled and splintered trees crept slowly across the road. The French artillerymen were eating their supper. A long train of motor trucks growled past, splashing mud over the men crowded along the sides of the road. The sun set, and a lot of batteries down in the valley began firing, making it impossible to talk. The air was full of a shrieking and droning of shells overhead. The Frenchmen stretched and yawned and went down into their dugout. Chrisfield watched them enviously. The stars were beginning to come out in the green sky behind the tall lacerated trees. Chrisfield's legs ached with cold. He began to get crazily anxious for something to happen, for something to happen, but the column waited, without moving, through the gathering darkness. Chrisfield chewed steadily, trying to think of nothing but the taste of the tobacco in his mouth.

The column was moving again; as they reached the brow of another hill Chrisfield felt a curious sweetish smell that made his nostrils smart. “Gas,” he thought, full of panic, and put his hand to the mask that hung round his neck. But he did not want to be the first to put it on. No order came. He marched on, cursing the sergeant and the lieutenant. But maybe they'd been killed by it. He had a vision of the whole regiment sinking down in the road suddenly, overcome by the gas.

“Smell anythin', Andy?” he whispered cautiously.

“I can smell a combination of dead horses and tube roses and banana oil and the ice cream we used to have at college and dead rats in the garret, but what the hell do we care now?” said Andrews, giggling. “This is the damnedest fool business ever....”

“He's crazy,” muttered Chrisfield to himself. He looked at the stars in the black sky that seemed to be going along with the column on its march. Or was it that they and the stars were standing still while the trees moved away from them, waving their skinny shattered arms? He could hardly hear the tramp of feet on the road, so loud was the pandemonium of the guns ahead and behind. Every now and then a rocket would burst in front of them and its red and green lights would mingle for a moment with the stars. But it was only overhead he could see the stars. Everywhere else white and red glows rose and fell as if the horizon were on fire.

As they started down the slope, the trees suddenly broke away and they saw the valley between them full of the glare of guns and the white light of star shells. It was like looking into a stove full of glowing embers. The hillside that sloped away from them was full of crashing detonations and yellow tongues of flame. In a battery near the road, that seemed to crush their skulls each time a gun fired, they could see the dark forms of the artillerymen silhouetted in fantastic attitudes against the intermittent red glare. Stunned and blinded, they kept on marching down the road. It seemed to Chrisfield that they were going to step any minute into the flaring muzzle of a gun.

At the foot of the hill, beside a little grove of uninjured trees, they stopped again. A new train of trucks was crawling past them, huge blots in the darkness. There were no batteries near, so they could hear the grinding roar of the gears as the trucks went along the uneven road, plunging in and out of shellholes.

Chrisfield lay down in the dry ditch, full of bracken, and dozed with his head on his pack. All about him were stretched other men. Someone was resting his head on Chrisfield's thigh. The noise had subsided a little. Through his doze he could hear men's voices talking in low crushed tones, as if they were afraid of speaking aloud. On the road the truck-drivers kept calling out to each other shrilly, raspingly. The motors stopped running one after another, making almost a silence, during which Chrisfield fell asleep.

Something woke him. He was stiff with cold and terrified. For a moment he thought he had been left alone, that the company had gone on, for there was no one touching him.

Overhead was a droning as of gigantic mosquitoes, growing fast to a loud throbbing. He heard the lieutenant's voice calling shrilly:

“Sergeant Higgins, Sergeant Higgins!”

The lieutenant stood out suddenly black against a sheet of flame. Chrisfield could see his fatigue cap a little on one side and his trench coat, drawn in tight at the waist and sticking out stiffly at the knees. He was shaken by the explosion. Everything was black again. Chrisfield got to his feet, his ears ringing. The column was moving on. He heard moaning near him in the darkness. The tramp of feet and jingle of equipment drowned all other sound. He could feel his shoulders becoming raw under the tugging of the pack. Now and then the flare from aeroplane bombs behind him showed up wrecked trucks on the side of the road. Somewhere a machine gun spluttered. But the column tramped on, weighed down by the packs, by the deadening exhaustion.

The turbulent flaring darkness was calming to the grey of dawn when Chrisfield stopped marching. His eyelids stung as if his eyeballs were flaming hot. He could not feel his feet and legs. The guns continued incessantly like a hammer beating on his head. He was walking very slowly in a single file, now and then stumbling against the man ahead of him. There was earth on both sides of him, clay walls that dripped moisture. All at once he stumbled down some steps into a dugout, where it was pitch-black. An unfamiliar smell struck him, made him uneasy; but his thoughts seemed to reach him from out of a great distance. He groped to the wall. His knees struck against a bunk with blankets in it. In another second he was sunk fathoms deep in sleep.

When he woke up his mind was very clear. The roof of the dugout was of logs. A bright spot far away was the door. He hoped desperately that he wasn't on duty. He wondered where Andy was; then he remembered that Andy was crazy,--“a yeller dawg,” Judkins had called him. Sitting up with difficulty he undid his shoes and puttees, wrapped himself in his blanket. All round him were snores and the deep breathing of exhausted sleep. He closed his eyes.