Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

  “Say, pick ’em up, can’t yer?” said Small. Judkins was sweeping the little gasping bodies out among the dust and dirt.

  A stoutish man stooped and picked the little birds up one by one, puckering his lips into an expression of tenderness. He made his two hands into a nest-shaped hollow, out of which stretched the long necks and the gaping orange mouths. Andrews ran into him at the door.

  “Hello, Dad,” he said. “What the hell?”

  “I just picked these up.”

  “So they couldn’t let the poor little devils stay there? God! it looks to me as if they went out of their way to give pain to everything, bird, beast or man.”

  “War ain’t no picnic,” said Judkins.

  “Well, God damn it, isn’t that a reason for not going out of your way to raise more hell with people’s feelings than you have to?”

  A face with peaked chin and nose on which was stretched a parchment-colored skin appeared in the door.

  “Hello, boys,” said the “Y” man. “I just thought I’d tell you I’m going to open the canteen tomorrow, in the last shack on the Beaucourt road. There’ll be chocolate, ciggies, soap, and everything.”

  Everybody cheered. The “Y” man beamed.

  His eye lit on the little birds in Dad’s hands.

  “How could you?” he said. “An American soldier being deliberately cruel. I would never have believed it.”

  “Ye’ve got somethin’ to learn,” muttered Dad, waddling out into the twilight on his bandy legs.

  Chrisfield had been watching the scene at the door with unseeing eyes. A terrified nervousness that he tried to beat off had come over him. It was useless to repeat to himself again and again that he didn’t give a damn; the prospect of being brought up alone before all those officers, of being cross-questioned by those curt voices, frightened him. He would rather have been lashed. Whatever was he to say, he kept asking himself; he would get mixed up or say things he didn’t mean to, or else he wouldn’t be able to get a word out at all. If only Andy could go up with him, Andy was educated, like the officers were; he had more learning than the whole shooting-match put together. He’d be able to defend himself, and defend his friends, too, if only they’d let him.

  “I felt just like those little birds that time they got the bead on our trench at Boticourt,” said Jenkins, laughing.

  Chrisfield listened to the talk about him as if from another world. Already he was cut off from his outfit. He’d disappear and they’d never know or care what became of him.

  The mess-call blew and the men filed out. He could hear their talk outside, and the sound of their mess-kits as they opened them. He lay on his bunk staring up into the dark. A faint blue light still came from outside, giving a curious purple color to Small’s red face and long drooping nose at the end of which hung a glistening drop of moisture.

  Chrisfield found Andrews washing a shirt in the brook that flowed through the ruins of the village the other side of the road from the buildings where the division was quartered. The blue sky flicked with pinkish-white clouds gave a shimmer of blue and lavender and white to the bright water. At the bottom could be seen battered helmets and bits of equipment and tin cans that had once held meat. Andrews turned his head; he had a smudge of mud down his nose and soapsuds on his chin.

  “Hello, Chris,” he said, looking him in the eyes with his sparkling blue eyes, “how’s things?” There was a faint anxious frown on his forehead.

  “Two-thirds of one month’s pay an’ confined to quarters,” said Chrisfield cheerfully.

  “Gee, they were easy.”

  “Um-hum, said Ah was a good shot an’ all that, so they’d let me off this time.”

  Andrews started scrubbing at his shirt again.

  “I’ve got this shirt so full of mud I don’t think I ever will get it clean,” he said.

  “Move ye ole hide away, Andy. Ah’ll wash it. You ain’t no good for nothin’.”

  “Hell no, I’ll do it.”

  “Move ye hide out of there.”

  “Thanks awfully.”

  Andrews got to his feet and wiped the mud off his nose with his bare forearm.

  “Ah’m goin’ to shoot that bastard,” said Chrisfield, scrubbing at the shirt.

  “Don’t be an ass, Chris.”

  “Ah swear to God Ah am.”

  “What’s the use of getting all wrought up. The thing’s over. You’ll probably never see him again.”

  “Ah ain’t all het up. … Ah’m goin’ to do it though.” He wrung the shirt out carefully and flipped Andrews in the face with it. “There ye are,” he said.

  “You’re a good fellow, Chris, even if you are an ass.”

  “Tell me we’re going into the line in a day or two.”

  “There’s been a devil of a lot of artillery going up the road; French, British, every old kind.”

  “Tell me they’s raisin’ hell in the Oregon forest.”

  They walked slowly across the road. A motorcycle despatch-rider whizzed past them.

  “It’s them guys has the fun,” said Chrisfield.

  “I don’t believe anybody has much.”

  “What about the officers?”

  “They’re too busy feeling important to have a real hell of a time.”

  The hard cold rain beat like a lash in his face. There was no light anywhere and no sound but the hiss of the rain in the grass. His eyes strained to see through the dark until red and yellow blotches danced before them. He walked very slowly and carefully, holding something very gently in his hand under his raincoat. He felt himself full of a strange subdued fury; he seemed to be walking behind himself spying on his own actions, and what he saw made him feel joyously happy, made him want to sing.

  He turned so that the rain beat against his cheek. Under his helmet he felt his hair full of sweat that ran with the rain down his glowing face. His fingers clutched very carefully the smooth stick he had in his hand.

  He stopped and shut his eyes for a moment; through the hiss of the rain he had heard a sound of men talking in one of the shanties. When he shut his eyes he saw the white face of Anderson before him, with its unshaven chin and the eyebrows that met across the nose.

  Suddenly he felt the wall of a house in front of him. He put out his hand. His hand jerked back from the rough wet feel of the tar paper, as if it had touched something dead. He groped along the wall, stepping very cautiously. He felt as he had felt reconnoitering in the Bringy Wood. Phrases came to his mind as they had then. Without thinking what they meant, the words Make the world safe for Democracy formed themselves in his head. They were very comforting. They occupied his thoughts. He said them to himself again and again. Meanwhile his free hand was fumbling very carefully with the fastening that held the wooden shutter over a window. The shutter opened a very little, creaking loudly, louder than the patter of rain on the roof of the shack. A stream of water from the roof was pouring into his face.

  Suddenly a beam of light transformed everything, cutting the darkness in two. The rain glittered like a bead curtain. Chrisfield was looking into a little room where a lamp was burning. At a table covered with printed blanks of different size sat a corporal; behind him was a bunk and a pile of equipment. The corporal was reading a magazine. Chrisfield looked at him a long time; his fingers were tight about the smooth stick. There was no one else in the room.

  A sort of panic seized Chrisfield; he strode away noisily from the window and pushed open the door of the shack.

  “Where’s Sergeant Anderson?” he asked in a breathless voice of the first man he saw.

  “Corp’s there if it’s anything important,” said the man. “Anderson’s gone to an O.T.C. Left day before yesterday.”

  Chrisfield was out in the rain again. It was beating straight in his face, so that his eyes were full of water. He was trembling. He had suddenly become terrified. The smooth stick he held seemed to burn him. He was straining his ears for an explosion. Walking straight before him down the road, he went fa
ster and faster as if trying to escape from it. He stumbled on a pile of stones. Automatically he pulled the string out of the grenade and threw it far from him.

  There was a minute’s pause.

  Red flame spurted in the middle of the wheatfield. He felt the sharp crash in his eardrums.

  He walked fast through the rain. Behind him, at the door of the shack, he could hear excited voices. He walked recklessly on, the rain blinding him. When he finally stepped into the light he was so dazzled he could not see who was in the wine shop.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Chris,” said Andrews’s voice. Chrisfield blinked the rain out of his lashes. Andrews sat writing with a pile of papers before him and a bottle of champagne. It seemed to Chrisfield to soothe his nerves to hear Andy’s voice. He wished he would go on talking a long time without a pause.

  “If you aren’t the crowning idiot of the ages,” Andrews went on in a low voice. He took Chrisfield by the arm and led him into the little back room, where was a high bed with a brown coverlet and a big kitchen table on which were the remnants of a meal.

  “What’s the matter? Your arm’s trembling like the devil. But why. … O pardon, Crimpette. C’est un ami. … You know Crimpette, don’t you?” He pointed to a youngish woman who had just appeared from behind the bed. She had a flabby rosy face and violet circles under her eyes, dark as if they’d been made by blows, and untidy hair. A dirty grey muslin dress with half the hooks off held in badly her large breasts and flabby figure. Chrisfield looked at her greedily, feeling his furious irritation flame into one desire.

  “What’s the matter with you, Chris? You’re crazy to break out of quarters this way?”

  “Say,Andy, git out o’ here. Ah ain’t your sort anyway. … Git out o’ here.”

  “You’re a wild man. I’ll grant you that. … But I’d just as soon be your sort as anyone else’s. … Have a drink.”

  “Not now.”

  Andrews sat down with his bottle and his papers, pushing away the broken plates full of stale food to make a place on the greasy table. He took a gulp out of the bottle, that made him cough, then put the end of his pencil in his mouth and stared gravely at the paper.

  “No, I’m your sort, Chris,” he said over his shoulder, “only they’ve tamed me. O God, how tame I am.”

  Chrisfield did not listen to what he was saying. He stood in front of the woman, staring in her face. She looked at him in a stupid frightened way. He felt in his pockets for some money. As he had just been paid he had a fifty-franc note. He spread it out carefully before her. Her eyes glistened. The pupils seemed to grow smaller as they fastened on the bit of daintily colored paper. He crumpled it up suddenly in his fist and shoved it down between her breasts.

  Some time later Chrisfield sat down in front of Andrews. He still had his wet slicker on.

  “Ah guess you think Ah’m a swine,” he said in his normal voice. “Ah guess you’re about right.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Andrews. Something made him put his hand on Chrisfield’s hand that lay on the table. It had a feeling of cool health.

  “Say, why were you trembling so when you came in here? You seem all right now.”

  “Oh, Ah dunno’,” said Chrisfield in a soft resonant voice.

  They were silent for a long while. They could hear the woman’s footsteps going and coming behind them.

  “Let’s go home,” said Chrisfield.

  “All right. … Bonsoir, Crimpette.”

  Outside the rain had stopped. A stormy wind had torn the clouds to rags. Here and there clusters of stars showed through.

  They splashed merrily through the puddles. But here and there reflected a patch of stars when the wind was not ruffling them.

  “Christ, Ah wish Ah was like you, Andy,” said Chrisfield.

  “You don’t want to be like me, Chris. I’m no sort of a person at all. I’m tame. O you don’t know how damn tame I am.”

  “Learnin’ sure do help a feller to git along in the world.”

  “Yes, but what’s the use of getting along if you haven’t any world to get along in? Chris, I belong to a crowd that just fakes learning. I guess the best thing that can happen to us is to get killed in this butchery. We’re a tame generation. … It’s you that it matters to kill.”

  “Ah ain’t no good for anythin’. … Ah doan give a damn. … Lawsee, Ah feel sleepy.”

  As they slipped in the door of their quarters, the sergeant looked at Chrisfield searchingly. Andrews spoke up at once.

  “There’s some rumors going on at the latrine, Sarge. The fellows from the Thirty-second say we’re going to march into hell’s half-acre about Thursday.”

  “A lot they know about it.”

  “That’s the latest edition of the latrine news.”

  “The hell it is! Well, d’you want to know something, Andrews. … It’ll be before Thursday, or I’m a Dutchman.” Sergeant Higgins put on a great air of mystery.

  Chrisfield went to his bunk, undressed quietly and climbed into his blankets. He stretched his arms languidly a couple of times, and while Andrews was still talking to the sergeant, fell asleep.

  IV

  The moon lay among clouds on the horizon, like a big red pumpkin among its leaves.

  Chrisfield squinted at it through the boughs of the apple trees laden with apples that gave a winey fragrance to the crisp air. He was sitting on the ground, his legs stretched limply before him, leaning against the rough trunk of an apple tree. Opposite him, leaning against another tree, was the square form, surmounted by a large long-jawed face, of Judkins. Between them lay two empty cognac bottles. All about them was the rustling orchard, with its crooked twigs that made a crackling sound rubbing together in the gusts of the autumn wind, that came heavy with a smell of damp woods and of rotting fruits and of all the ferment of the over-ripe fields. Chrisfield felt it stirring the moist hair on his forehead and through the buzzing haze of the cognac heard the plunk, plunk, plunk of apples dropping that followed each gust, and the twanging of night insects, and, far in the distance, the endless rumble of guns, like tomtoms beaten for a dance.

  “Ye heard what the Colonel said, didn’t ye?” said Judkins in a voice hoarse from too much drink.

  Chrisfield belched and nodded his head vaguely. He remembered Andrews’s white fury after the men had been dismissed,—how he had sat down on the end of a log by the field kitchen, staring at the patch of earth he beat into mud with the toe of his boot.

  “Then,” went on Judkins, trying to imitate the Colonel’s solemn efficient voice, “‘On the subject of prisoners’”—he hiccoughed and made a limp gesture with his hand—“‘On the subject of prisoners, well, I’ll leave that to you, but juss remember … juss remember what the Huns did to Belgium, an’ I might add that we have barely enough emergency rations as it is, and the more prisoners you have the less you fellers’ll git to eat.’”

  “That’s what he said, Judkie; that’s what he said.”

  “‘An the more prisoners ye have, the less youse’ll git to eat,’” chanted Judkins, making a triumphal flourish with his hand.

  Chrisfield groped for the cognac bottle; it was empty; he waved it in the air a minute and then threw it into the tree opposite him. A shower of little apples fell about Judkins’s head. He got unsteadily to his feet.

  “I tell you, fellers,” he said, “war ain’t no picnic.”

  Chrisfield stood up and grabbed at an apple. His teeth crunched into it.

  “Sweet,” he said.

  “Sweet, nauthin’,” mumbled Judkins, “war ain’t no picnic. … I tell you, buddy, if you take any prisoners”—he hiccoughed—“after what the Colonel said, I’ll lick the spots out of you, by God I will. … Rip up their guts that’s all, like they was dummies. Rip up their guts.” His voice suddenly changed to one of childish dismay. “Gee, Chris, I’m going to be sick,” he whispered.

  “Look out,” said Chrisfield, pushing him away. Judkins leaned against a tree and vomited.

 
The full moon had risen above the clouds and filled the apple orchard with chilly golden light that cast a fantastic shadow pattern of interlaced twigs and branches upon the bare ground littered with apples. The sound of the guns had grown nearer. There were loud eager rumbles as of bowls being rolled very hard on a bowling alley, combined with a continuous roar like sheets of iron being shaken.

  “Ah bet it’s hell out there,” said Chrisfield.

  “I feel better,” said Judkins. “Let’s go get some more cognac.”

  “Ah’m hungry,” said Chrisfield. “Let’s go an’ get that ole woman to cook us some aigs.”

  “Too damn late,” growled Judkins.

  “How the hell late is it?”

  “Dunno, I sold my watch.”

  They were walking at random through the orchard. They came to a field full of big pumpkins that gleamed in the moonlight and cast shadows black as holes. In the distance they could see wooded hills.

  Chrisfield picked up a medium-sized pumpkin and threw it as hard as he could into the air. It split into three when it landed with a thud on the ground, and the moist yellow seeds spilled out.

  “Some strong man, you are,” said Judkins, tossing up a bigger one.

  “Say, there’s a farmhouse, maybe we could get some aigs from the hen-roost.”

  “Hell of a lot of hens. …”

  At that moment the crowing of a rooster came across the silent fields. They ran towards the dark farm buildings.

  “Look out, there may be officers quartered there.”

  They walked cautiously round the square, silent group of buildings. There were no lights. The big wooden door of the court pushed open easily, without creaking. On the roof of the barn the pigeon-cot was etched dark against the disc of the moon. A warm smell of stables blew in their faces as the two men tiptoed into the manure-littered farmyard. Under one of the sheds they found a table on which a great many pears were set to ripen. Chrisfield put his teeth into one. The rich sweet juice ran down his chin. He ate the pear quickly and greedily, and then bit into another.