“that dug-out was sure one hell-hole. see we had been gettin’ gas right along and it poured in the dug-out, as they had to keep openin’ the door to let ’em in with wounded. there was nine fellows, naked and smeared all up with iodine and blood, stretched out on bunks. most of ’em were so torn up and badly hurt that their wounds had made ’em numb. consequently they were darn quiet—except one little greek boy. he was alive to pain all right. both his eyes were hangin’ to strings of flesh and his body was like an old flour-sieve. he couldn’t keep from moanin’, and i’ll be damned if i could keep from listenin’ to him.
“the first thing a wounded man generally does is to jerk his mask off, if he’s got one on. that’s what the boys were doin’ in the dug-out. you had to battle with some of ’em to keep the things on. those that did get the masks off got sick and vomited all over. gosh, o. d., it was kinda bad down there. the big thing that appealed to me was how all the guys acted. those that wasn’t wounded worked along pretty cool and didn’t show much signs of breakin’. the wounded showed a lot of guts the way they kept still and didn’t let the old hurts get the best of ’em.
“while i was down there givin’ ’em a hand a doughboy that had been captured crawled into the dug-out with his tongue cut out. the boches did that to scare us, and they drove him back into our lines with a bayonet. hines, one of the gun crew, went crazy, he got so mad when he heard that, and tore out of the place for seicheprey, where he got fightin’ hand to hand with the germans.
“i went back to the gun and was fixin’ to try and get frank when lieutenant davis gave us orders to fire again, and said there was no use tryin’ to bring him in, as he was dead.
“the ammunition was comin’ mighty slow and when a man came in with a shell i told him to make it snappy and get ’em comin’ faster. he said, ‘all right, jimmy.’ i looked at him hard, and be damned if it wasn’t father farrell, our chaplain. say, that was one brave little guy. he ain’t any bigger than a small kid, but he was luggin’ shells for a long time before he let anybody know it was him.
“course, every time one o’ the boys would get it he would run to him toot sweet and do what he could—brought the wounded in and buried the dead right under the hardest kind of a fire. father farrell got nicked in the arm with a shell splinter on his way back to the rear the next day. so did i. on recommendation of our general the french gave him a craw de guerre. i never could say that thing right, but it’s a war cross for pullin’ hero stuff.
“i saw how hard the chaplain was workin’ and i knew my job on the crew wasn’t so heavy, so he took my place and i carted ammunition a while. just when we thought that the thing was fineed a boche plane came swoopin’ down on us and opened up a machine-gun barrage. i’ll say that the boches had pretty good guts, but no more than carl davis had, the ‘loot’ that was our c. o. davis grabbed a rifle from one of the gang and ran right after that boche, pepperin’ away at him like he was shootin’ at a flock of blackbirds. it was still darker than hell and all that we could see of the boche plane was black outlines, just as if some big hawk was flappin’ its wings right over our heads. gee! it was uncanny and sort of ghostlike. davis was runnin’ up and down like a man in a relay race all by himself. he didn’t have nothin’ on except an undershirt, pants, and boots. we all laughed at him and that helped a lot to get our minds off our troubles. finally the boche whirred away and lieutenant davis put the old rifle up. poor davis, he was some fightin’ kid. they got him up at chateau-thierry. but that comes later.
“the battlin’ was wearin’ down to a small noise. most of the boches had all they could stand. they began tryin’ to get back to their lines, and our batteries cut ’em up like a lawn-mower gets the grass. their artillery had shut up except those few guns that was firin’ at ambulances and wounded parties. you see, our ambulances had to come up over a road that was pickin’ and when they started ’round dead man’s curve—bluey! bang!—the boches would smash ’em, wounded and all, into pieces. we had to keep our wounded down in that dugout about six hours waitin’ to evacuate ’em on that account. the little greek boy i was tellin’ you about died before they got him away.
“exceptin’ for a few guns goin’, now and then, the place was quiet ’round five-thirty. so quiet you could hear the wounded moanin’ mighty easy, and now and then a thud was heard when barbed wire supportin’ a dead man would snap and let the body hit the ground.
“the early mornin’ was as gray as cigarette ashes, but it was plenty light enough to see what was ’round us. i wished it had been a blame sight darker. i couldn’t look at poor old frank gordon to save my life. he was lyin’ right outside the trench—face turned toward the dug-out, mouth wide open and all blue and bloated like. the only arm he had was pointin’ to the sky just like an arrow. he was almost straddlin’ wilson’s trunk.
“but gordon and wilson was just two of many. there was beaucoup more of our boys and officers lyin’ ’round in stiff heaps, all broken and twisted up. down ’round the first-line infantry trenches it was as grim lookin’ as an opened-up graveyard. there was beaucoup germans piled up on the ground and hangin’ on wire entanglements. all mostly dead—some just dyin’. i saw a few americans scattered in and out between ’em, too.
“father farrell came along and asked some of us to give him a hand to put the boys away. i was one of the gang that started the buryin’ stuff, but when i came to frank gordon— honest to god, o. d., i couldn’t touch him. sounds foolish to say that—don’t it? i swear it’s a fact. guess i didn’t have the guts.
“i says, ‘father, you’ll have to get somebody else on this detail in my place. i can’t touch gordon.’ i used to sleep with that boy and listen to him tell me ’bout his girl, a colleen that was waitin’ for him to come back to the old country—gordon was born in ireland, you see. father farrell understood, i guess, ’cause he says, ‘here, you take his identification tag, this ring and pocketbook, and keep it; they’re his effects. then you beat it to the dug-out.’ i grabbed them things and run like hell. i was kinda feelin’ funny in the gills. first and last time it’s hit me that way, though.
“we got relieved that night and were sent back to the échelon for a rest and somethin’ to eat. we’d been monjayin’ the old iron rations for almost a week straight.
“it wouldn’t have been nothin’ more than half natural for us to mope ’round after such excitement and think ’bout it or talk a hell of a lot. but i never saw much of that stuff—not durin’ the whole time we’ve been in the guerre. day after we got back we got an old madame to cook up a big feed for some of us that was on the gun crew. had a hot bath before monjayin’, and maybe i didn’t feel like a regular guy!
“all the fellows was cleaned up, and you’d have never known that they had been battlin’. course everybody missed old gordon. he could tell the funniest stories i ever listened to and play and sing stuff in a way that would have set broadway nuts. somebody got up and said a toast to him, and we drank champagne to his memory. there wasn’t no crape-hangers at the party. course we was mighty sorry for the boys that had passed out. but we still had to fight the guerre for ourselves, and if there’s any way the guerre can lick you it’s by getting your goat over things that’s happened to you or your pals. you got to forget it, o. d. got to be a hard guy as much as you can.
“i heard lots about the stuff called philosophy of soldiers and all that bosh before i got over here—if it’s philosophy that they’ve got or actin’, i don’t believe the boys know it themselves. anyhow they call it that in books and magazines. i used to throw that kind of line back yonder, years ago—so it seems. but i’m finée now. you got to hand me nails when i ask for nails to-day. brass-headed tacks won’t do, o. d.
“but to get back to the philosophy stuff. in this guerre you got to tell yourself that there ain’t no shells or bullets with your name on ’em, watch your step on the gas stuff and you ain’t got much to say about whether a bomb is goin’ to get you or not. so quit worryin’ ’bout ’em till you get in a raid. makes no difference how close they come or how many they get right next to you. that’s just proof that nothin’ ain’t labeled for you. get me on that? all right, next. one of the first damn things in french i’m goin’ to learn you is to say, ‘say la guerre.’ means, ‘it’s the war.’ when you get to sayin’ that till you believe it then you got the old war licked a hundred ways. that’s my way of lookin’ at this stuff. call it philosophy if you want to. but old zeke doolittle looks at it the same way and he couldn’t know a philosophy book from a monocle.
“i ate so much at that party had to see the doctor next day. had a bellyache that worried me more than the battle of seicheprey. doc tried to shoot some bull ’bout my havin’ got gassed—then he painted my stomach with iodine and gave me a pill—same old stuff.”
