Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

  The regiment was marching away in columns of fours. Chrisfield’s ankle gave him sharp hot pain with every step. His tunic was too tight and the sweat tingled on his back. All about him were sweating irritated faces; the woollen tunics with their high collars were like straight-jackets that hot afternoon. Chrisfield marched with his fists clenched; he wanted to fight somebody, to run his bayonet into a man as he ran it into the dummy in that everlasting bayonet drill, he wanted to strip himself naked, to squeeze the wrists of a girl until she screamed.

  His company was marching past another company that was lined up to be dismissed in front of a ruined barn which had a roof that sagged in the middle like an old cow’s back. The sergeant stood in front of them with his arms crossed, looking critically at the company that marched past. He had a white heavy face and black eyebrows that met over his nose. Chrisfield stared hard at him as he passed, but Sergeant Anderson did not seem to recognize him. It gave him a dull angry feeling as if he’d been cut by a friend.

  The company melted suddenly into a group of men unbuttoning their shirts and tunics in front of the little board shanty where they were quartered, which had been put up by the French at the time of the Marne, years before, so a man had told Andy.

  “What are you dreamin’ about, Indiana?” said Judkins punching Chrisfield jovially in the ribs.

  Chrisfield doubled his fists and gave him a smashing blow in the jaw that Judkins warded off just in time.

  Judkins’s face flamed red. He swung with a long bent arm.

  “What the hell d’you think this is?” shouted somebody.

  “What’s he want to hit me for?” spluttered Judkins, breathless.

  Men had edged in between them.

  “Lemme git at him.”

  “Shut up, you fool,” said Andy, drawing Chrisfield away. The company scattered sullenly. Some of the men lay down in the long uncut grass in the shade of the ruins of the house, one of the walls of which made a wall of the shanty where they lived.

  Andrews and Chrisfield strolled in silence down the road, kicking their feet into the deep dust. Chrisfield was limping. On both sides of the road were fields of ripe wheat, golden under the sun. In the distance were low green hills fading to blue, pale yellow in patches with the ripe grain. Here and there a thick clump of trees or a screen of poplars broke the flatness of the long smooth hills. In the hedge-rows were blue corn-flowers and poppies in all colors from carmine to orange that danced in the wind on their wiry stalks. At the turn in the road they lost the noise of the division and could hear the bees droning in the big dull purple cloverheads and in the gold hearts of the daisies.

  “You’re a wild man, Chris. What the hell came over you to try an’ smash poor old Judkie’s jaw? He could lick you anyway. He’s twice as heavy as you are.”

  Chrisfield walked on in silence.

  “God, I should think you’ld have had enough of that sort of thing. … I should think you’ld be sick of wanting to hurt people. You don’t like pain yourself, do you?” Andrews spoke in spurts, bitterly, his eyes on the ground.

  “Ah think Ah sprained ma goddam ankle when Ah tumbled off the back o’ the truck yesterday.”

  “Better go on sick call. … Say, Chris, I’m sick of this business. … Almost like you’d rather shoot yourself than keep on.”

  “Ah guess you’re gettin’ the dolefuls, Andy. Look … let’s go in swim-min’. There’s a lake down the road.”

  “I’ve got my soap in my pocket. We can wash a few cooties off.”

  “Don’t walk so goddam fast … Andy, you got more learnin’ than I have. You ought to be able to tell what it is makes a feller go crazy like that. … Ah guess Ah got a bit o’ the devil in me.”

  Andrews was brushing the soft silk of a poppy petal against his face.

  “I wonder if it’ld have any effect if I ate some of these,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “They say you go to sleep if you lie down in a poppy-field. Wouldn’t you like to do that, Chris, an’ not wake up till the war was over and you could be a human being again.”

  Andrews bit into the green seed capsule he held in his hand. A milky juice came out.

  “It’s bitter … I guess it’s the opium,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A stuff that makes you go to sleep and have wonderful dreams. In China …”

  “Dreams,” interrupted Chrisfield. “Ah had one of them last night. Dreamed Ah saw a feller that had shot hisself that I saw one time reconnoitrin’ out in the Bringy Wood.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nawthin’, juss a Fritzie had shot hisself.”

  “Better than opium,” said Andrews, his voice trembling with sudden excitement.

  “Ah dreamed the flies buzzin’ round him was aëroplanes. … Remember the last rest village?”

  “And the major who wouldn’t close the window? You bet I do!”

  They lay down on the grassy bank that sloped from the road to the pond. The road was hidden from them by the tall reeds through which the wind lisped softly. Overhead huge white cumulus clouds, piled tier on tier like fantastic galleons in full sail, floated, changing slowly in a greenish sky. The reflection of clouds in the silvery glisten of the pond’s surface was broken by clumps of grasses and bits of floating weeds. They lay on their backs for some time before they started taking their clothes off, looking up at the sky, that seemed vast and free, like the ocean, vaster and freer than the ocean.

  “Sarge says a delousin’ machine’s comin’ through this way soon.”

  “We need it, Chris.”

  Andrews pulled his clothes off slowly.

  “It’s great to feel the sun and the wind on your body, isn’t it, Chris?”

  Andrews walked towards the pond and lay flat on his belly on the fine soft grass near the edge.

  “It’s great to have your body all there, isn’t it?” he said in a dreamy voice. “Your skin’s so soft and supple, and nothing in the world has the feel a muscle has. … Gee, I don’t know what I’d do without my body.”

  Chrisfield laughed.

  “Look how ma ole ankle’s raised. … Found any cooties yet?” he said.

  “I’ll try and drown ’em,” said Andrews. “Chris, come away from those stinking uniforms and you’ll feel like a human being with the sun on your flesh instead of like a lousy soldier.”

  “Hello, boys,” came a high-pitched voice unexpectedly. A “Y” man with sharp nose and chin had come up behind them.

  “Hello,” said Chrisfield sullenly, limping towards the water.

  “Want the soap?” said Andrews.

  “Going to take a swim, boys?” asked the “Y” man. Then he added in a tone of conviction, “That’s great.”

  “Better come in, too,” said Andrews.

  “Thanks, thanks. … Say, if you don’t mind my suggestion, why don’t you fellers get under the water. … You see there’s two French girls looking at you from the road.” The “Y” man giggled faintly.

  “They don’t mind,” said Andrews soaping himself vigorously.

  “Ah reckon they lahk it,” said Chrisfield.

  “I know they haven’t any morals. … But still.”

  “And why should they not look at us? Maybe there won’t be many people who get a chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever seen what a little splinter of a shell does to a feller’s body?” asked Andrews savagely. He splashed into the shallow water and swam towards the middle of the pond.

  “Ye might ask ’em to come down and help us pick the cooties off,” said Chrisfield and followed in Andrews’s wake. In the middle he lay on a sand bank in the warm shallow water and looked back at the “Y” man, who still stood on the bank. Behind him were other men undressing, and soon the grassy slope was filled with naked men and yellowish grey underclothes, and many dark heads and gleaming backs were bobbing up and down in the water. When he came out, he found Andrews sitting cross-legged ne
ar his clothes. He reached for his shirt and drew it on him.

  “God, I can’t make up my mind to put the damn thing on again,” said Andrews in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself; “I feel so clean and free. It’s like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again. … I think I’ll just walk off naked across the fields.”

  “D’you call serving your country slavery, my friend?” The “Y” man, who had been roaming among the bathers, his neat uniform and well-polished boots and puttees contrasting strangely with the mud-clotted, sweat-soaked clothing of the men about him, sat down on the grass beside Andrews.

  “You’re goddam right I do.”

  “You’ll get into trouble, my boy, if you talk that way,” said the “Y” man in a cautious voice.

  “Well, what is your definition of slavery?”

  “You must remember that you are a voluntary worker in the cause of democracy. … You’re doing this so that your children will be able to live peaceful. …”

  “Ever shot a man?”

  “No. … No, of course not, but I’d have enlisted, really I would. Only my eyes are weak.”

  “I guess so,” said Andrews under his breath.

  “Remember that your women folks, your sisters and sweethearts and mothers, are praying for you at this instant.”

  “I wish somebody’d pray me into a clean shirt,” said Andrews, starting to get into his clothes. “How long have you been over here?”

  “Just three months.” The man’s sallow face, with its pinched nose and chin lit up. “But, boys, those three months have been worth all the other years of my min—” he caught himself—“life. … I’ve heard the great heart of America beat. O boys, never forget that you are in a great Christian undertaking.”

  “Come on, Chris, let’s beat it.” They left the “Y” man wandering among the men along the bank of the pond, to which the reflection of the greenish silvery sky and the great piled white clouds gave all the free immensity of space. From the road they could still hear his high pitched voice.

  “And that’s what’ll survive you and me,” said Andrews.

  “Say, Andy, you sure can talk to them guys,” said Chris admiringly.

  “What’s the use of talking? God, there’s a bit of honeysuckle still in bloom. Doesn’t that smell like home to you, Chris?”

  “Say, how much do they pay those ‘Y’ men, Andy?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  They were just in time to fall into line for mess. In the line everyone was talking and laughing, enlivened by the smell of food and the tinkle of mess-kits. Near the field kitchen Chrisfield saw Sergeant Anderson talking with Higgins, his own sergeant. They were laughing together, and he heard Anderson’s big voice saying jovially, “We’ve pulled through this time, Higgins. … I guess we will again.” The two sergeants looked at each other and cast a paternal, condescending glance over their men and laughed aloud.

  Chrisfield felt powerless as an ox under the yoke. All he could do was work and strain and stand at attention, while that white-faced Anderson could lounge about as if he owned the earth and laugh importantly like that. He held out his plate. The K.P. splashed the meat and gravy into it. He leaned against the tar-papered wall of the shack, eating his food and looking sullenly over at the two sergeants, who laughed and talked with an air of leisure while the men of their two companies ate hurriedly as dogs all round them.

  Chrisfield glanced suddenly at Anderson, who sat in the grass at the back of the house, looking out over the wheat fields, while the smoke of a cigarette rose in spirals about his face and his fair hair. He looked peaceful, almost happy. Chrisfield clenched his fists and felt the hatred of that other man rising stingingly within him.

  “Guess Ah got a bit of the devil in me,” he thought.

  The windows were so near the grass that the faint light had a greenish color in the shack where the company was quartered. It gave men’s faces, tanned as they were, the sickly look of people who work in offices, when they lay on their blankets in the bunks made of chicken wire, stretched across mouldy scantlings. Swallows had made their nests in the peak of the roof, and their droppings made white dobs and blotches on the floor-boards in the alley between the bunks, where a few patches of yellow grass had not yet been completely crushed away by footsteps. Now that the shack was empty, Chrisfield could hear plainly the peep-peep of the little swallows in their mud nests. He sat quiet on the end of one of the bunks, looking out of the open door at the blue shadows that were beginning to lengthen on the grass of the meadow behind. His hands, that had got to be the color of terra cotta, hung idly between his legs. He was whistling faintly. His eyes, in their long black eyelashes, were fixed on the distance, though he was not thinking. He felt a comfortable unexpressed well-being all over him. It was pleasant to be alone in the barracks like this, when the other men were out at grenade practice. There was no chance of anyone shouting orders at him.

  A warm drowsiness came over him. From the field kitchen alongside came the voice of a man singing:

  “O my girl’s a lulu, every inch a lulu,

  Is Lulu, that pretty lil’ girl o’ mi-ine.”

  In their mud nests the young swallows twittered faintly overhead. Now and then there was a beat of wings and a big swallow skimmed into the shack. Chrisfield’s cheeks began to feel very softly flushed. His head drooped over on his chest. Outside the cook was singing over and over again in a low voice, amid a faint clatter of pans:

  “O my girl’s a lulu, every inch a lulu,

  Is Lulu, that pretty lil’ girl o’ mi-ine.”

  Chrisfield fell asleep.

  He woke up with a start. The shack was almost dark. A tall man stood out black against the bright oblong of the door.

  “What are you doing here?” said a deep snarling voice.

  Chrisfield’s eyes blinked. Automatically he got to his feet; it might be an officer. His eyes focussed suddenly. It was Anderson’s face that was between him and the light. In the greenish obscurity the skin looked chalk-white in contrast to the heavy eyebrows that met over the nose and the dark stubble on the chin.

  “How is it you ain’t out with the company?”

  “Ah’m barracks guard,” muttered Chrisfield. He could feel the blood beating in his wrists and temples, stinging his eyes like fire. He was staring at the floor in front of Anderson’s feet.

  “Orders was all the companies was to go out an’ not leave any guard.”

  “Ah!’

  “We’ll see about that when Sergeant Higgins comes in. Is this place tidy?”

  “You say Ah’m a goddamned liar, do ye?” Chrisfield felt suddenly cool and joyous. He felt anger taking possession of him. He seemed to be standing somewhere away from himself watching himself get angry.

  “This place has got to be cleaned up. … That damn General may come back to look over quarters,” went on Anderson coolly.

  “You call me a goddam liar,” said Chrisfield again, putting as much insolence as he could summon into his voice. “Ah guess you doan’ remember me.”

  “Yes, I know, you’re the guy tried to run a knife into me once,” said Anderson coolly, squaring his shoulders. “I guess you’ve learned a little discipline by this time. Anyhow you’ve got to clean this place up. God, they haven’t even brushed the birds’ nests down! Must be some company!” said Anderson with a half laugh.

  “Ah ain’t agoin’ to neither, fur you.”

  “Look here, you do it or it’ll be the worse for you,” shouted the sergeant in his deep rasping voice.

  “If ever Ah gits out o’ the army Ah’m goin’ to shoot you. You’ve picked on me enough.” Chrisfield spoke slowly, as coolly as Anderson.

  “Well, we’ll see what a court-martial has to say to that.”

  “Ah doan give a hoot in hell what ye do.”

  Sergeant Anderson turned on his heel and went out, twisting the corner button of his tunic in his big fingers. Already the sound of tramping feet was heard and the shouted order
, “Dis-missed.” Then men crowded into the shack, laughing and talking. Chrisfield sat still on the end of the bunk, looking at the bright oblong of the door. Outside he saw Anderson talking to Sergeant Higgins. They shook hands, and Anderson disappeared. Chrisfield heard Sergeant Higgins call after him:

  “I guess the next time I see you I’ll have to put my heels together an’ salute.”

  Anderson’s booming laugh faded as he walked away.

  Sergeant Higgins came into the shack and walked straight up to Chrisfield, saying in a hard official voice:

  “You’re under arrest. … Small, guard this man; get your gun and cartridge belt. I’ll relieve you so you can get mess.”

  He went out. Everyone’s eyes were turned curiously on Chrisfield. Small, a red-faced man with a long nose that hung down over his upper lip, shuffled sheepishly over to his place beside Chrisfield’s cot and let the butt of his rifle come down with a bang on the floor. Somebody laughed. Andrews walked up to them, a look of trouble in his blue eyes and in the lines of his lean tanned cheeks.

  “What’s the matter, Chris?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Tol’ that bastard Ah didn’t give a hoot in hell what he did,” said Chrisfield in a broken voice.

  “Say, Andy, I don’t think I ought ter let anybody talk to him,” said Small in an apologetic tone. “I don’t see why Sarge always gives me all his dirty work.”

  Andrews walked off without replying.

  “Never mind, Chris; they won’t do nothin’ to ye,” said Jenkins, grinning at him good-naturedly from the door.

  “Ah doan give a hoot in hell what they do,” said Chrisfield again. He lay back in his bunk and looked at the ceiling. The barracks was full of a bustle of cleaning up. Judkins was sweeping the floor with a broom made of dry sticks. Another man was knocking down the swallows’ nests with a bayonet. The mud nests crumbled and fell on the floor and the bunks, filling the air with a flutter of feathers and a smell of birdlime. The little naked bodies, with their orange bills too big for them, gave a soft plump when they hit the boards of the floor, where they lay giving faint gasping squeaks. Meanwhile, with shrill little cries, the big swallows flew back and forth in the shanty, now and then striking the low roof.