Part 2

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?”

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.

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 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.

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.”

“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.”