it was the night for relief. fourteen men, with the remainder of their equipment about them, huddled around in a group waiting for the new troops to appear and take over their sector. they were tired, hungry, and nerve-racked; the word “morale” could not conceivably be associated with them. their three weeks’ experience in the woods had so bludgeoned their senses that they had been unresponsive when told that they were to be relieved. but after a while they partly recovered under the stimulation of the picture of warm food and a shelter of comparative safety. from a thick apathy they became clamorous, ill at ease, waiting for the new men to come. as the darkness grew their nerves twitched, and they peered often and again down the gulley from which the relief was to come into sight. at last a muffled clatter reached their ears. it swelled and was accompanied by voices in a polyglot of tongues. cigarette lights and the flare of matches were seen along the line of the incoming horde.
lieutenant bedford had risen at their approach. now he nervously shifted his weight[162] from one leg to the other. “the drafted idiots,” he muttered, “do they want to kill all of us with these lights? hey, you guys,” he called, “put out those damned matches.” a swell of jeers greeted him.
“all right, third platoon, let’s go. if these damned fools want every german gun to start pounding at them, let them. come on.”
the platoon rose wearily and dragged through the woods in the direction of the village. their spirits were so depressed, their bodies so fatigued, that, though the village was but two miles distant, an hour had elapsed before they marched through the cluttered streets between the rows of battered houses. but they did not stop. the outline of the village faded and on they tramped. behind them shells rumbled over from the german lines, and, in answer, the crack and the sudden flare of a large gun being fired sounded to the right and left of them. at the noise the men’s muscles tightened, their nostrils narrowed and were bloodless. at the appearance of danger unheralded they were thorough automata; the explosions urged on their tired legs, whose muscles seemed tied in inextricable knots. thick forests rose on each side of the tortuous white road, their dark-blue tops[163] bewitchingly patterned against the sky. where the woods were divided by a narrow path the platoon turned off, marching between the trees.
farther in the woods, where the path widened slightly, the men halted. in ten minutes they were curled up in their blankets, asleep.
the platoon awoke in the heat of the day. in the woods the leaves of the trees were unruffled by a breeze. glaring down from directly above, the sun was a monstrous incinerator. but for it all nature would have been inanimate. the men stretched experimentally. their empty intestines made them aware of themselves. from among the trees floated a rich odor of frying food. “steak,” some one guessed. the smell intensified their hunger, weakened them. king cole, shading the sun from his owl-like eyes, sat up and sniffed.
“who said ‘steak’?” he observed. “smells like good old kentucky fried chicken to me.”
“chicken, hell,” said hartman, the professional pessimist. “it’s probably fried canned bill.”
“oh, you make me sick,” cole answered. “can’t you let a man dream?”
but it was steak. and dipped in flour before it was fried. it was not choice steak, but it was[164] edible, very edible. and the quantity had been prepared for sixty men, while there were only fourteen men to dine.
“go easy,” cautioned lieutenant bedford, gnawing a huge steak which he held in his hand. “there’s plenty of chow, so you don’t need to be in a hurry to eat it all. you’ll do better if you eat slowly. stomach’s not used to this sort of food.”
“je’s, this is jist like bein’ home,” king cole informed the assembly.
“home? you never had a home. what are you talkin’ about?” jeered mccann, the new york roughneck who had been confined in the hospital twice with delirium tremens. “ho there, you yellow greaseball, what do you want?” he hailed one of the mess helpers who was approaching.
“i heard that r. e. mccann got scairt and shot himself when he got up to the front, and i come down to see if it was true.”
the greaseball, whose name describes him well, looked inquiringly around. mccann failed to answer the badinage. the greaseball sat down among the men, who now had become filled and grew confidential. “you fellahs had a pretty tough time up there, didn’t you?”
“i’ll say we did.”
“you’d a thought so if you’d a been there, you lowlife.”
“yeh, pretty soft for you birds in the galley.”
“but not as soft as it’s goin’ to be for you guys,” the greaseball was ingratiating.
“whaddya mean?” the platoon scoffed.
“ain’t you heard?” the greaseball looked surprised.
“heard nothin’,” cole answered grumpily. “where’ve we been to hear anything?”
“well,” hesitatingly, “maybe i hadn’t ought to tell.”
“go on and tell, greaseball.”
“yeh, what the hell else are you good for?”
“well ... you guys ain’t goin’ back to the front no more.”
“hooray!” they sceptically shouted. “you damned liar.”
“fact. the brigade commander was down here yesterday, and i heard him tell major adams that the first battalion was goin’ on board ship.”
“oh-o. that ain’t so good. i was sick all the way over on that damn transport,” pugh remembered aloud.
“sure, you always do,” said rousey, the old-timer.[166] “but after the first cruise you’re all right. god, man, you don’t know how soft it is on board ship. a clean bunk and good chow. shore leave whenever you go into port. why, i remember——”
“maybe you’re right, but i’ll take my chances with my feet on the ground. there ain’t no damn whale gonna eat me, not if i know it.”
“well, it’s a blame sight better than lettin’ them squareheads use you for a target. i’m glad we’re goin’.”
while they talked the rumor that they had so sceptically regarded had become a fact. no one doubted that they were soon to be loaded into box cars and sent off to some seaport, where trim, clean ships would be waiting to take them aboard.
