Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (best e book reader android .txt) đ
- Author: John Dos Passos
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Fuselli looked enviously towards the kitchen and thought of the day when he would be a non-com too. âI got to get busy,â he said to himself earnestly. Overseas, under fire, heâd have a chance to show what he was worth; and he pictured himself heroically carrying a wounded captain back to a dressing tent, pursued by fierce-whiskered men with spiked helmets like firemenâs helmets.
The strumming of a guitar came strangely down the dark street of the camp.
âSome guy sure can play,â said Bill Grey who, with his hands in his pockets, slouched along beside Fuselli.
They looked in the door of one of the barracks. A lot of soldiers were sitting in a ring round two tall negroes whose black faces and chests glistened like jet in the faint light.
âCome on, Charley, give us another,â said someone.
âDo Ah git it now, or musâ Ah hesitate?â
One negro began chanting while the other strummed carelessly on the guitar.
âNo, give us the âTitanic.ââ
The guitar strummed in a crooning ragtime for a moment. The negroâs voice broke into it suddenly, pitched high.
âDis is de song ob de Titanic, Sailinâ on de sea.â
The guitar strummed on. There had been a tension in the negroâs voice that had made everyone stop talking. The soldiers looked at him curiously.
âHow de Titanic ran in dat cole iceberg, How de Titanic ran in dat cole iceberg Sailinâ on de sea.â
His voice was confidential and soft, and the guitar strummed to the same sobbing ragtime. Verse after verse the voice grew louder and the strumming faster.
âDe Titanicâs sinkinâ in de deep blue, Sinkinâ in de deep blue, deep blue, Sinkinâ in de sea. O de women anâ de chilen a-floatinâ in de sea, O de women anâ de chilen a-floatinâ in de sea, Rounâ dat cole iceberg, Sung âNearer, my gawd, to Thee,â Sung âNearer, my gawd, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.ââ
The guitar was strumming the hymn-tune. The negro was singing with every cord in his throat taut, almost sobbing.
A man next to Fuselli took careful aim and spat into the box of sawdust in the middle of the ring of motionless soldiers.
The guitar played the ragtime again, fast, almost mockingly. The negro sang in low confidential tones.
âO de women anâ de chilen dey sank in de sea. O de women anâ de chilen dey sank in de sea, Rounâ dat cole iceberg.â
Before he had finished a bugle blew in the distance. Everybody scattered.
Fuselli and Bill Grey went silently back to their barracks.
âIt must be an awful thing to drown in the sea,â said Grey as he rolled himself in his blankets. âIf one of those bastard U-boatsâŠâ
âI donât give a damn,â said Fuselli boisterously; but as he lay staring into the darkness, cold terror stiffened him suddenly. He thought for a moment of deserting, pretending he was sick, anything to keep from going on the transport.
âO de women anâ de chilen dey sank in de sea, Rounâ dat cole iceberg.â
He could feel himself going down through icy water. âItâs a hell of a thing to send a guy over there to drown,â he said to himself, and he thought of the hilly streets of San Francisco, and the glow of the sunset over the harbor and ships coming in through the Golden Gate. His mind went gradually blank and he went to sleep.
The column was like some curious khaki-colored carpet, hiding the road as far as you could see. In Fuselliâs company the men were shifting their weight from one foot to the other, muttering, âWhat the hell aâ they waiting for now?â Bill Grey, next to Fuselli in the ranks, stood bent double so as to take the weight of his pack off his shoulders. They were at a cross-roads on fairly high ground so that they could see the long sheds and barracks of the camp stretching away in every direction, in rows and rows, broken now and then by a grey drill field. In front of them the column stretched to the last bend in the road, where it disappeared on a hill among mustard-yellow suburban houses.
Fuselli was excited. He kept thinking of the night before, when he had helped the sergeant distribute emergency rations, and had carried about piles of boxes of hard bread, counting them carefully without a mistake. He felt full of desire to do things, to show what he was good for. âGee,â he said to himself, âthis warâs a lucky thing for me. I might have been in the R.C. Vicker Companyâs store for five years anâ never got a raise, anâ here in the army I got a chance to do almost anything.â
Far ahead down the road the column was beginning to move. Voices shouting orders beat crisply on the morning air. Fuselliâs heart was thumping. He felt proud of himself and of the companyâthe damn best company in the whole outfit. The company ahead was moving, it was their turn now.
âForwaâard, march!â
They were lost in the monotonous tramp of feet. Dust rose from the road, along which like a drab brown worm crawled the column.
A sickening unfamiliar smell choked their nostrils.
âWhat are they taking us down here for?â
âDamned if I know.â
They were filing down ladders into the terrifying pit which the hold of the ship seemed to them. Every man had a blue card in his hand with a number on it. In a dim place like an empty warehouse they stopped. The sergeant shouted out:
âI guess this is our diggings. Weâll have to make the best of it.â Then he disappeared.
Fuselli looked about him. He was sitting in one of the lowest of three tiers of bunks roughly built of new pine boards. Electric lights placed here and there gave a faint reddish tone to the gloom, except at the ladders, where high-power lamps made a white glare. The place was full of tramping of feet and the sound of packs being thrown on bunks as endless files of soldiers poured in down every ladder. Somewhere down the alley an officer with a shrill voice was shouting to his men: âSpeed it up there; speed it up there.â Fuselli sat on his bunk looking at the terrifying confusion all about, feeling bewildered and humiliated. For how many days would they be in that dark pit? He suddenly felt angry. They had no right to treat a feller like that. He was a man, not a bale of hay to be bundled about as anybody liked.
âAnâ if weâre torpedoed a fat chance weâll have down here,â he said aloud.
âThey got sentries posted to keep us from goin up on deck,â said someone.
âGod damn them. They treat you like you was a steer being taken over for meat.â
âWell, youâre not a damn sight more. Meat for the guns.â
A little man lying in one of the upper bunks had spoken suddenly, contracting his sallow face into a curious spasm, as if the words had burst from him in spite of an effort to keep them in.
Everybody looked up at him angrily.
âThat goddam kike Eisenstein,â muttered someone.
âSay, tie that bull outside,â shouted Bill Grey good-naturedly.
âFools,â muttered Eisenstein, turning over and burying his face in his hands.
âGee, I wonder what it is makes it smell so funny down here,â said Fuselli.
Fuselli lay flat on deck resting his head on his crossed arms. When he looked straight up he could see a lead-colored mast sweep back and forth across the sky full of clouds of light grey and silver and dark purplish-grey showing yellowish at the edges. When he tilted his head a little to one side he could see Bill Greyâs heavy colorless face and the dark bristles of his unshaven chin and his mouth a little twisted to the left, from which a cigarette dangled unlighted. Beyond were heads and bodies huddled together in a mass of khaki overcoats and life preservers. And when the roll tipped the deck he had a view of moving green waves and of a steamer striped grey and white, and the horizon, a dark taut line, broken here and there by the tops of waves.
âO God, I feel sick,â said Bill Grey, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and looking at it revengefully.
âIâd be all right if everything didnât stink so. Anâ that mess hall. Nearly makes a guy puke to think of it.â Fuselli spoke in a whining voice, watching the top of the mast move like a pencil scrawling on paper, back and forth across the mottled clouds.
âYou bellyachinâ again?â A brown moon-shaped face with thick black eyebrows and hair curling crisply about a forehead with many horizontal wrinkles rose from the deck on the other side of Fuselli.
âGet the hell out of here.â
âFeel sick, sonny?â came the deep voice again, and the dark eyebrows contracted in an expression of sympathy. âFunny, Iâd have my sixshooter out if I was home and you told me to get the hell out, sonny.â
âWell, who wouldnât be sore when they have to go on K.P.?â said Fuselli peevishly.
âI ainât been down to mess in three days. A feller who lives on the plains like I do ought to take to the sea like a duck, but it donât seem to suit me.â
âGod, theyâre a sick lookinâ bunch I have to sling the hash to,â said Fuselli more cheerfully. âI donât know how they get that way. The fellers in our company ainât that way. They look like they was askeered somebody was going to hit âem. Ever noticed that, Meadville?â
âWell, what dâye expect of you guys who live in the city all your lives and donât know the butt from the barrel of a gun anâ never straddled anything more like a horse than a broomstick. Yeâre juss made to be sheep. No wonder they have to herd you round like calves.â Meadville got to his feet and went unsteadily to the rail, keeping, as he threaded his way through the groups that covered the transportâs after deck, a little of his cowboyâs bow-legged stride.
âI know what it is that makes menâs eyes blink when they go down to that putrid mess,â came a nasal voice.
Fuselli turned round.
Eisenstein was sitting in the place Meadville had just left.
âYou do, do you?â
âItâs part of the system. Youâve got to turn men into beasts before ye can get âem to act that way. Ever read Tolstoi?â
âNo. Say, you want to be careful how you go talkinâ around the way you do.â Fuselli lowered his voice confidentially. âI heard of a feller beinâ shot at Camp Merritt for talkinâ around.â
âI donât careâŠ. Iâm a desperate man,â said Eisenstein.
âDonât ye feel sick? Gawd, I doâŠ. Did you get rid oâ any of it, Meadville?â
âWhy donât they fight their ole war somewhere a man can get to on a horse?⊠Say thatâs my seat.â
âThe place was emptyâŠ. I sat down in it,â said Eisenstein, lowering his head sullenly.
âYou kin have three winks to get out oâ my place,â said Meadville, squaring his broad shoulders.
âYou are
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