One Mans Initiation: 1917 | Page 9

You know the
one that used to throw stones at us out of that broken-down house at the
corner of the road.... Anyway, she comes up to me with a funny look in
her eyes an' starts makin' love to me. I had a regular wrastlin' match
gettin' away from her."
"Funny position for you to be in, getting away from a woman."
"But doesn't that strike you funny? Why, down where I come from a
drunken mulatto woman wouldn't act like that. They all keep up a fake

of not wantin' your attentions." His black eyes sparkled, and he laughed
his deep ringing laugh, that made the withered woman smile as she set
an omelette before them.
"Voilà, messieurs," she said with a grand air, as if it were a boar's head
that she was serving.
Three French infantrymen came into the café, shaking the rain off their
shoulders.
"Nothing to drink but champagne at four francs fifty," shouted Howe.
"Dirty night out, isn't it?"
"We'll drink that, then!"
Howe and Randolph moved up and they all sat at the same table.
"Fortune of war?"
"Oh, the war, what do you think of the war?" cried Martin.
"What do you think of the peste? You think about saving your skin."
"What's amusing about us is that we three have all saved our skins
together," said one of the Frenchmen.
"Yes. We are of the same class," said another, holding up his thumb.
"Mobilised same day." He held up his first finger. "Same company." He
held up a second finger. "Wounded by the same shell.... Evacuated to
the same hospital. Convalescence at same time. . Réformé to the same
depôt behind the lines."
"Didn't all marry the same girl, did you, to make it complete?" asked
Randolph.
They all shouted with laughter until the glasses along the bar rang.
"You must be Athos, Porthos, and d'Artagnan."

"We are," they shouted.
"Some more champagne, madame, for the three musketeers," sang
Randolph in a sort of operatic yodle.
"All I have left is this," said the withered woman, setting a bottle down
on the table.
"Is that poison?"
"It's cognac, it's very good cognac," said the old woman seriously.
"C'est du cognac! Vive le roi cognac!" everybody shouted.
"Au plein de mon cognac Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Au plein de mon cognac Qu'il fait bon dormir."
"Down with the war! Who can sing the 'Internationale'?"
"Not so much noise, I beg you, gentlemen," came the withered
woman's whining voice. "It's after hours. Last week I was fined. Next
time I'll be closed up."
The night was black when Martin and Randolph, after lengthy and
elaborate farewells, started down the muddy road towards the hospital.
They staggered along the slippery footpath beside the road, splashed
every instant with mud by camions, huge and dark, that roared
grindingly by. They ran and skipped arm-in-arm and shouted at the top
of their lungs:
"Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde, Qu'il fait bon dormir."
A stench of sweat and filth and formaldehyde caught them by the throat
as they went into the hospital tent, gave them a sense of feverish bodies

of men stretched all about them, stirring in pain.
"A car for la Bassée, Ambulance 4," said the orderly. Howe got himself
up off the hospital stretcher, shoving his flannel shirt back into his
breeches, put on his coat and belt and felt his way to the door,
stumbling over the legs of sleeping brancardiers as he went. Men swore
in their sleep and turned over heavily. At the door he waited a minute,
then shouted:
"Coming, Tom?"
"Too damn sleepy," came Randolph's voice from under a blanket.
"I've got cigarettes, Tom. I'll smoke 'em all up if you don't come."
"All right, I'll come."
"Less noise, name of God!" cried a man, sitting up on his stretcher.
After the hospital, smelling of chloride and blankets and reeking
clothes, the night air was unbelievably sweet. Like a gilt fringe on a
dark shawl, a little band of brightness had appeared in the east.
"Some dawn, Howe, ain't it?"
As they were going off, their motor chugging regularly, an orderly said:
"It's a special case. Go for orders to the commandant."
Colours formed gradually out of chaotic grey as the day brightened. At
the dressing-station an attendant ran up to the car.
"Oh, you're for the special case? Have you anything to tie a man with?"
"No, why?"
"It's nothing. He just tried to stab the sergeant-major."
The attendant raised a fist and tapped on his head as if knocking on a

door. "It's nothing. He's quieter now."
"What caused it?"
"Who knows? There is so much.... He says he must kill everyone. . ."
"Are you ready?"