Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

  “Funny,” he said to Hoggenback, “it’s not really as bad as I thought it would be.”

  “What d’you mean, this labor battalion? Hell, a feller can put up with anything; that’s one thing you learn in the army.”

  “I guess people would rather put up with things than make an effort to change them.”

  “You’re goddam right. Got a butt?”

  Andrews handed him a cigarette. They got to their feet and walked out into the twilight, holding their mess kits in front of them. As they were washing their mess kits in a tub of greasy water, where bits of food floated in a thick scum, Hoggenback suddenly said in a low voice:

  “But it all piles up, Buddy; some day there’ll be an accountin’. D’you believe in religion?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. I come of folks as done their own accountin’. My father an’ my gran’father before him. A feller can’t eat his bile day after day, day after day.”

  “I’m afraid he can, Hoggenback,” broke in Andrews. They walked towards the barracks.

  “Goddam it, no,” cried Hoggenback aloud. “There comes a point where you can’t eat yer bile any more, where it don’t do no good to cuss. Then you runs amuck.”

  Hanging his head he went slowly into the barracks.

  Andrews leaned against the outside of the building, staring up at the sky. He was trying desperately to think, to pull together a few threads of his life in this moment of respite from the nightmare. In five minutes the bugle would din in his ears, and he would be driven into the barracks. A tune came to his head that he played with eagerly for a moment, and then, as memory came to him, tried to efface with a shudder of disgust.

  “There’s the smile that makes you happy,

  There’s the smile that makes you sad.”

  It was almost dark. Two men walked slowly by in front of him.

  “Sarge, may I speak to you?” came a voice in a whisper.

  The sergeant grunted.

  “I think there’s two guys trying to break loose out of here.”

  “Who? If you’re wrong it’ll be the worse for you, remember that.”

  “Surley an’ Watson. I heard ’em talkin’ about it behind the latrine.”

  “Damn fools.”

  “They was sayin’ they’d rather be dead than keep up this life.”

  “They did, did they?”

  “Don’t talk so loud, Sarge. It wouldn’t do for any of the fellers to know I was talkin’ to yer. Say, Sarge … ” the voice became whining, “don’t you think I’ve nearly served my time down here?”

  “What do I know about that? ’Tain’t my job.”

  “But, Sarge, I used to be company clerk with my old outfit. Don’t ye need a guy round the office?”

  Andrews strode past them into the barracks. Dull fury possessed him. He took off his clothes and got silently into his blankets.

  Hoggenback and Happy were talking beside his bunk.

  “Never you mind,” said Hoggenback, “somebody’ll get that guy sooner or later.”

  “Git him, nauthin’! The fellers in that camp was so damn skeered they jumped if you snapped yer fingers at ’em. It’s the discipline. I’m tellin’ yer, it gits a feller in the end,” said Happy.

  Andrews lay without speaking, listening to their talk, aching in every muscle from the crushing work of the day.

  “They court-martialled that guy, a feller told me,” went on Hoggen-back. “An’ what d’ye think they did to him? Retired on half pay. He was a major.”

  “Gawd, if Oi iver git out o’ this army, Oi’ll be so goddam glad,” began Happy. Hoggenback interrupted:

  “That you’ll forgit all about the raw deal they gave you, an’ tell everybody how fine ye liked it.”

  Andrews felt the mocking notes of the bugle outside stabbing his ears. A non-com’s voice roared: “Quiet,” from the end of the building, and the lights went out. Already Andrews could hear the deep breathing of men asleep. He lay awake, staring into the darkness, his body throbbing with the monotonous rhythms of the work of the day. He seemed still to hear the sickening whine in the man’s voice as he talked to the sergeant outside in the twilight. “And shall I be reduced to that?” he was asking himself.

  Andrews was leaving the latrine when he heard a voice call softly, “Skinny.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Come here, I want to talk to you.” It was the Kid’s voice. There was no light in the ill-smelling shack that served for a latrine. Outside they could hear the guard humming softly to himself as he went back and forth before the barracks door.

  “Let’s you and me be buddies, Skinny.”

  “Sure,” said Andrews.

  “Say, what d’you think the chance is o’ cuttin’ loose?”

  “Pretty damn poor,” said Andrews.

  “Couldn’t you just make a noise like a hoop an’ roll away?”

  They giggled softly.

  Andrews put his hand on the boy’s arm.

  “But, Kid, it’s too risky. I got in this fix by taking a risk. I don’t feel like beginning over again, and if they catch you, it’s desertion. Leavenworth for twenty years, or life. That’ld be the end of everything.”

  “Well, what the hell’s this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know; they’ve got to let us out some day.”

  “Sh … sh. …”

  Kid put his hand suddenly over Andrews’s mouth. They stood rigid, so that they could hear their hearts pounding.

  Outside there was a brisk step on the gravel. The sentry halted and saluted. The steps faded into the distance, and the sentry’s humming began again.

  “They put two fellers in the jug for a month for talking like we are. … In solitary,” whispered Kid.

  “But, Kid, I haven’t got the guts to try anything now.”

  “Sure you have, Skinny. You an’ me’s got more guts than all the rest of ’em put together. God, if people had guts, you couldn’t treat ’em like they were curs. Look, if I can ever get out o’ this, I’ve got a hunch I can make a good thing writing movie scenarios. I want to get on in the world, Skinny.”

  “But, Kid, you won’t be able to go back to the States.”

  “I don’t care. New Rochelle’s not the whole world. They got the movies in Italy, ain’t they?”

  “Sure. Let’s go to bed.”

  “All right. Look, you an’ me are buddies from now on, Skinny.”

  Andrews felt the Kid’s hand press his arm.

  In his dark, airless bunk, in the lowest of three tiers, Andrews lay awake a long time, listening to the snores and the heavy breathing about him. Thoughts fluttered restlessly in his head, but in his blank hopelessness he could only frown and bite his lips, and roll his head from side to side on the rolled-up tunic he used for a pillow, listening with desperate attention to the heavy breathing of the men who slept above him and beside him.

  When he fell asleep he dreamed that he was alone with Geneviève Rod in the concert hall of the Schola Cantorum, and that he was trying desperately hard to play some tune for her on the violin, a tune he kept forgetting, and in the agony of trying to remember, the tears streamed down his cheeks. Then he had his arms round Geneviève’s shoulders and was kissing her, kissing her, until he found that it was a wooden board he was kissing, a wooden board on which was painted a face with broad forehead and great pale brown eyes, and small tight lips, and all the while a boy who seemed to be both Chrisfield and the Kid kept telling him to run or the M.P.’s would get him. Then he sat frozen in icy terror with a bottle in his hand, while a frightful voice behind him sang very loud:

  “There’s the smile that makes you happy,

  There’s the smile that makes you sad.”

  The bugle woke him, and he sat up with such a start that he hit his head hard against the bunk above him. He lay back cringing from the pain like a child. But he had to hurry desperately to get his clothes on in time for roll call. It was with a feeling of relief that he found that mess was not re
ady, and that men were waiting in line outside the kitchen shack, stamping their feet and clattering their mess kits as they moved about through the chilly twilight of the spring morning. Andrews found he was standing behind Hoggenback.

  “How’s she comin’, Skinny?” whispered Hoggenback, in his low mysterious voice.

  “Oh, we’re all in the same boat,” said Andrews with a laugh.

  “Wish it’ld sink,” muttered the other man. “D’ye know,” he went on after a pause, “I kinder thought an edicated guy like you’ld be able to keep out of a mess like this. I wasn’t brought up without edication, but I guess I didn’t have enough.”

  “I guess most of ’em can; I don’t see that it’s much to the point. A man suffers as much if he doesn’t know how to read and write as if he had a college education.”

  “I dunno, Skinny. A feller who’s led a rough life can put up with an awful lot. The thing is, Skinny, I might have had a commission if I hadn’t been so damned impatient. … I’m a lumberman by trade, and my dad’s cleaned up a pretty thing in war contracts jus’ a short time ago. He could have got me in the engineers if I hadn’t gone off an’ enlisted.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I was restless-like. I guess I wanted to see the world. I didn’t care about the goddam war, but I wanted to see what things was like over here.”

  “Well, you’ve seen,” said Andrews, smiling.

  “In the neck,” said Hoggenback, as he pushed out his cup for coffee.

  In the truck that was taking them to work, Andrews and the Kid sat side by side on the jouncing backboard and tried to talk above the rumble of the exhaust.

  “Like Paris?” asked the Kid.

  “Not this way,” said Andrews.

  “Say, one of the guys said you could parlay French real well. I want you to teach me. A guy’s got to know languages to get along in this country.”

  “But you must know some.”

  “Bedroom French,” said the Kid, laughing.

  “Well?”

  “But if I want to write a movie scenario for an Eytalian firm, I can’t just write ‘voulay-vous couchezavecmoa’ over and over again.”

  “But you’ll have to learn Italian, Kid.”

  “I’m goin’ to. Say, ain’t they taking us a hell of a ways today, Skinny?”

  “We’re goin’ to Passy Wharf to unload rock,” said somebody in a grumbling voice.

  “No, it’s cement … cement for the stadium we’re presentin’ the French Nation. Ain’t you read in the ‘Stars and Stripes’ about it?”

  “I’d present ’em with a swift kick, and a hell of a lot of other people, too.”

  “So we have to sweat unloadin’ ce-ment all day,” muttered Hoggenback, “to give these goddam frawgs a stadium.”

  “If it weren’t that it’ld be somethin’ else.”

  “But, ain’t we got folks at home to work for?” cried Hoggenback. “Mightn’t all this sweat be doin’ some good for us? Building a stadium! My gawd!”

  “Pile out there. … Quick!” rasped a voice from the driver’s seat. Through the haze of choking white dust, Andrews got now and then a glimpse of the grey-green river, with its tugboats sporting their white cockades of steam and their long trailing plumes of smoke, and its blunt-nosed barges and its bridges, where people walked jauntily back and forth, going about their business, going where they wanted to go. The bags of cement were very heavy, and the unaccustomed work sent racking pains through his back. The biting dust stung under his finger nails, and in his mouth and eyes. All the morning a sort of refrain went through his head: “People have spent their lives … doing only this. People have spent their lives doing only this.” As he crossed and recrossed the narrow plank from the barge to the shore, he looked at the black water speeding seawards and took extraordinary care not to let his foot slip. He did not know why, for one-half of him was thinking how wonderful it would be to drown, to forget in eternal black silence the hopeless struggle. Once he saw the Kid standing before the sergeant in charge in an attitude of complete exhaustion, and caught a glint of his blue eyes as he looked up appealingly, looking like a child begging out of a spanking. The sight amused him, and he said to himself: “If I had pink cheeks and cupid’s bow lips, I might be able to go through life on my blue eyes”; and he pictured the kid, a fat, cherubic old man, stepping out of a white limousine, the way people do in the movies, and looking about him with those same mild blue eyes. But soon he forgot everything in the agony of the heavy cement bags bearing down on his back and hips.

  In the truck on the way back to the mess the Kid, looking fresh and smiling among the sweating men, like ghosts from the white dust, talking hoarsely above the clatter of the truck, sidled up very close to Andrews.

  “D’you like swimmin’, Skinny?”

  “Yes. I’d give a lot to get some of this cement dust off me,” said Andrews, without interest.

  “I once won a boy’s swimmin’ race at Coney,” said the Kid. Andrews did not answer.

  “Were you in the swimmin’ team or anything like that, Skinny, when you went to school?”

  “No. … It would be wonderful to be in the water, though. I used to swim way out in Chesapeake Bay at night when the water was phosphorescent.”

  Andrews suddenly found the Kid’s blue eyes, bright as flames from excitement, staring into his.

  “God, I’m an ass,” he muttered.

  He felt the Kid’s fist punch him softly in the back. “Sergeant said they was goin’ to work us late as hell tonight,” the Kid was saying aloud to the men round him.

  “I’ll be dead if they do,” muttered Hoggenback.

  “An’ you a lumberjack!”

  “It ain’t that. I could carry their bloody bags two at a time if I wanted ter. A feller gets so goddam mad, that’s all; so goddam mad. Don’t he, Skinny?” Hoggenback turned to Andrews and smiled.

  Andrews nodded his head.

  After the first two or three bags Andrews carried in the afternoon, it seemed as if every one would be the last he could possibly lift. His back and thighs throbbed with exhaustion; his face and the tips of his fingers felt raw from the biting cement dust.

  When the river began to grow purple with evening, he noticed that two civilians, young men with buff-colored coats and canes, were watching the gang at work.

  “They says they’s newspaper reporters, writing up how fast the army’s being demobilized,” said one man in an awed voice.

  “They come to the right place.”

  “Tell ’em we’re leavin’ for home now. Loadin’ our barracks bags on the steamer.

  The newspaper men were giving out cigarettes. Several men grouped round them. One shouted out:

  “We’re the guys does the light work. Blackjack Pershing’s own pet labor battalion.”

  “They like us so well they just can’t let us go.”

  “Damn jackasses,” muttered Hoggenback, as, with his eyes to the ground, he passed Andrews. “I could tell ’em some things’d make their goddam ears buzz.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “What the hell’s the use? I ain’t got the edication to talk up to guys like that.”

  The sergeant, a short, red-faced man with a mustache clipped very short, went up to the group round the newspaper men.

  “Come on, fellers, we’ve got a hell of a lot of this cement to get in before it rains,” he said in a kindly voice; “the sooner we get it in, the sooner we get off.”

  “Listen to that bastard, ain’t he juss too sweet for pie when there’s company?” muttered Hoggenback on his way from the barge with a bag of cement.

  The Kid brushed past Andrews without looking at him.

  “Do what I do, Skinny,” he said.

  Andrews did not turn round, but his heart started thumping very fast. A dull sort of terror took possession of him. He tried desperately to summon his will power, to keep from cringing, but he kept remembering the way the room had swung round when the M.P. had hit him, and heard aga
in the cold voice of the lieutenant saying: “One of you men teach him how to salute.”

  Time dragged out interminably.

  At last, coming back to the edge of the wharf, Andrews saw that there were no more bags in the barge. He sat down on the plank, too exhausted to think. Blue-grey dusk was closing down on everything. The Passy bridge stood out, purple against a great crimson afterglow.

  The Kid sat down beside him, and threw an arm trembling with excitement round his shoulders.

  “The guard’s lookin’ the other way. They won’t miss us till they get to the truck. … Come on, Skinny,” he said in a low, quiet voice.

  Holding on to the plank, he let himself down into the speeding water. Andrews slipped after him, hardly knowing what he was doing. The icy water closing about his body made him suddenly feel awake and vigorous. As he was swept by the big rudder of the barge, he caught hold of the Kid, who was holding on to a rope. They worked their way without speaking round to the outer side of the rudder. The swift river tugging savagely at them made it hard to hold on.

  “Now they can’t see us,” said the Kid between clenched teeth. “Can you work your shoes an’ pants off?”

  Andrews started struggling with one boot, the Kid helping to hold him up with his free hand.

  “Mine are off,” he said. “I was all fixed.” He laughed, though his teeth were chattering.

  “All right. I’ve broken the laces,” said Andrews.

  “Can you swim under water?”

  Andrews nodded.

  “We want to make for that bunch of barges the other side of the bridge. The barge people’ll hide us.”

  “How d’ye know they will?”

  The Kid had disappeared.

  Andrews hesitated a moment, then let go his hold and started swimming with the current for all his might.

  At first he felt strong and exultant, but very soon he began to feel the icy grip of the water bearing him down; his arms and legs seemed to stiffen. More than against the water, he was struggling against paralysis within him, so that he thought that every moment his limbs would go rigid. He came to the surface and gasped for air. He had a second’s glimpse of figures, tiny like toy soldiers, gesticulating wildly on the deck of the barge. The report of a rifle snapped through the air. He dove again, without thinking, as if his body were working independently of his mind.