Three Soldiers | Page 8

take a feller to git out o' this camp?"
"Dunno. Some guys says three weeks and some says six months.... Say, mebbe you'll get into our company. They transferred a lot of men out the other day, an' the corporal says they're going to give us rookies instead."
"Goddam it, though, but Ah want to git overseas."
"It's swell over there," said Fuselli, "everything's awful pretty- like. Picturesque, they call it. And the people wears peasant costumes.... I had an uncle who used to tell me about it. He came from near Torino."
"Where's that?"
"I dunno. He's an Eyetalian."
"Say, how long does it take to git overseas?"
"Oh, a week or two," said Andrews.
"As long as that?" But the movie had begun again, unfolding scenes of soldiers in spiked helmets marching into Belgian cities full of little milk carts drawn by dogs and old women in peasant costume. There were hisses and catcalls when a German flag was seen, and as the troops were pictured advancing, bayonetting the civilians in wide Dutch pants, the old women with starched caps, the soldiers packed into the stuffy Y. M. C. A. hut shouted oaths at them. Andrews felt blind hatred stirring like something that had a life of its own in the young men about him. He was lost in it, carried away in it, as in a stampede of wild cattle. The terror of it was like ferocious hands clutching his throat. He glanced at the faces round him. They were all intent and flushed, glinting with sweat in the heat of the room.
As he was leaving the hut, pressed in a tight stream of soldiers moving towards the door, Andrews heard a man say:
"I never raped a woman in my life, but by God, I'm going to. I'd give a lot to rape some of those goddam German women."
"I hate 'em too," came another voice, "men, women, children and unborn children. They're either jackasses or full of the lust for power like their rulers are, to let themselves be governed by a bunch of warlords like that."
"Ah'd lahk te cepture a German officer an' make him shine ma boots an' then shoot him dead," said Chris to Andrews as they walked down the long row towards their barracks.
"You would?"
"But Ah'd a damn side rather shoot somebody else Ah know," went on Chris intensely. "Don't stay far from here either. An' Ah'll do it too, if he don't let off pickin' on me."
"Who's that?"
"That big squirt Anderson they made a file closer at drill yesterday. He seems to think that just because Ah'm littler than him he can do anything he likes with me."
Andrews turned sharply and looked in his companion's face; something in the gruffness of the boy's tone startled him. He was not accustomed to this. He had thought of himself as a passionate person, but never in his life had he wanted to kill a man.
"D'you really want to kill him?"
"Not now, but he gits the hell started in me, the way he teases me. Ah pulled ma knife on him yisterday. You wasn't there. Didn't ye notice Ah looked sort o' upsot at drill?"
"Yes...but how old are you, Chris!"
"Ah'm twenty. You're older than me, ain't yer?"
"I'm twenty-two."
They were leaning against the wall of their barracks, looking up at the brilliant starry night.
"Say, is the stars the same over there, overseas, as they is here?"
"I guess so," said Andrews, laughing. "Though I've never been to see."
"Ah never had much schoolin'," went on Chris. "I lef school when I was twelve, 'cause it warn't much good, an' dad drank so the folks needed me to work on the farm."
"What do you grow in your part of the country?"
"Mostly coan. A little wheat an' tobacca. Then we raised a lot o' stock.... But Ah was juss going to tell ye Ah nearly did kill a guy once."
"Tell me about it."
"Ah was drunk at the time. Us boys round Tallyville was a pretty tough bunch then. We used ter work juss long enough to git some money to tear things up with. An' then we used to play craps an' drink whiskey. This happened just at coan-shuckin' time. Hell, Ah don't even know what it was about, but Ah got to quarrellin' with a feller Ah'd been right smart friends with. Then he laid off an' hit me in the jaw. Ah don't know what Ah done next, but before Ah knowed it Ah had a hold of a shuck-in' knife and was slashin' at him with it. A knife like that's a turruble thing to stab a man with. It took four of 'em to hold me down an' git it away from me. They didn't keep me from givin' him a good cut across the chest, though. Ah was juss crazy drunk at the