Three Soldiers | Page 8

everything go, to
stamp out his maddening desire for music, to humble himself into the
mud of common slavery. He was still tingling with sudden anger from
the officer's voice that morning: "Sergeant, who is this man?" The
officer had stared in his face, as a man might stare at a piece of
furniture.
"Ain't this some film?" Chrisfield turned to him with a smile that drove
his anger away in a pleasant feeling of comradeship.
"The part that's comin's fine. I seen it before out in Frisco," said the

man on the other side of Andrews. "Gee, it makes ye hate the Huns."
The man at the piano jingled elaborately in the intermission between
the two parts of the movie.
The Indiana boy leaned in front of John Andrews, putting an arm round
his shoulders, and talked to the other man.
"You from Frisco?"
"Yare."
"That's goddam funny. You're from the Coast, this feller's from New
York, an' Ah'm from ole Indiana, right in the middle."
"What company you in?"
"Ah ain't yet. This feller an me's in Casuals."
"That's a hell of a place.... Say, my name's Fuselli."
"Mahn's Chrisfield."
"Mine's Andrews."
"How soon's it 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.