Through the Wheat

by Thomas Boyd

  “You’re damned right.”

  They gathered together their equipment and started after him down the road. It was a very small town and had been evacuated two days before. No matter if the feather beds had been taken away, there was plenty of dry hay to sleep on.

  Morning came and Sergeant Ryan was awake and engaged in rousing the men. After they had all been found, he assembled them on the street and issued orders:

  “Now you men can do what you please. Only don’t break anything. We are going to stay here until somebody comes for us. There ought to be plenty of food around, and you ought to know what to do.”

  There was plenty of food. Young pullets stalked temptingly before them, and young Higgins, who heretofore had never distinguished himself in any way, developed an uncanny aptitude of snaring them with a swoop of his left arm, clutching them neatly by the leg. Nearly all of the cellars were stored with potatoes, and wine was not uncommon.

  Into a chateau which presumably belonged to the overlord of the village the party carried their food. The pullets had been prepared for frying, potatoes were sizzling in a large kettle of grease, a table had been laid with a crisp linen cloth.

  The party was seated around a large table. Upon the linen cloth were china plates and silver knives and forks. In the centre were dishes piled high with fried chicken and potatoes. A salad brightened the menu. Wine-glasses and tumblers were filled and dust-covered bottles stood near at hand, ready to replenish them.

  “This is what you might call the life of Riley.” Sergeant Ryan spoke with his soft voice that almost broke into a chuckle.

  “I’ll tell the world. Jist like New York.”

  “Gittin’ lost ain’t hard to take. Jist think of the rest of the outfit, snappin’ into it whenever Harriman opens his yap.”

  The glasses were emptied and refilled. It was a religious ceremony.

  “Now if some of them dames we seen at Meaux was up here.”

  Suddenly Hicks started to laugh, long and loudly.

  “What you laughin’ at? Is there anything funny in my wantin’ a little company? ’Course these Frog gals ain’t as nice as . . .”

  “No, no. It wasn’t that at all. But we were going to save these people’s homes—and now we’re killing their chickens.”

  “You can’t be so damned finicky. This is war.”

  “He’s right, Hicks.” Bullis nodded sagely. “If we didn’t get it the Squareheads would.”

  The party, all but Ryan, tilted back in their chairs, their tunics unbuttoned and their belts unfastened. Their eyes having proved larger than their appetites, much of the food remained on the table untouched. But there was room in their bellies for wine, and bottle after bottle was opened and emptied.

  “There,” said Bullis, pointing to an empty bottle, “is a good soldier. He has done his duty and he is willing to do it again.”

  Foolishly, the men raised their hands to their forehead in a gesture of homage.

  Chapter VII

  THEY lurched out into the street. The day was hot and still, and the men, exhilarated by the wine and satiated with the food, were planning for other banquets as sumptuous. Around the corner of the crooked street marched an orderly, wearing his inevitable look of having the responsibility of the war on his shoulders.

  “Are you men from C Company of the Sixth?”

  “You’re damned right we are, buddy. Have you got anything to say about it?”

  “No. Only you’d better hurry up and join them or you’ll be up for a shoot for desertion.”

  “Why, whaddya mean? Where are they?” Several men spoke at once.

  “Well,” said the orderly importantly, “they were getting ready to go over the top when I left.”

  “Great Christ!” Ryan lamented. “We’d better hurry. Lead the way, orderly.”

  Flanked by rows of waving wheat, the party plodded along the dusty, narrow road.

  “Now we are in it for sure,” Hicks thought. “And me especially. If Major Adams hears about this I’ll be hung higher than a kite.” But he forgot the possibility of a court martial in his thinking of the platoon and of where they were and of where he was soon to be.

  The platoon was found in a clump of woods, a little to the left of the road. In front of them was the spectacle of what a French village looked like after it had been subjected to long-range artillery fire for three days. The spire of the inevitable little church had been blown off; there was not a house or barn whose side or roof had not been pierced by a shell. Mortar and glass were strewn about the streets, where they mingled with articles of household use. Beside the door of one of the houses a Red Cross flag had been fastened, and inside the medical detachment were making preparations for visitors.

  Old King Cole sat hunched up, his helmet over his eyes, looking down at his heavy shoes. Kahl, a light-weight boxer from Pennsylvania, was attacking a tin of corned beef, trying to open it with his bayonet. Wormrath, from Cleveland, who carried a khaki-colored handkerchief which he had used for three months, sat with his arms around his knees, his eyes looking far away and moist.

  “What’s the matter, King?” Hicks called, anxious somehow to make himself again a part of the platoon as soon as he could.

  “Oh, this damned war makes me sick. Always movin’ around. They never let you stay one place a minute.”

  “Join the marines and see the world,” some one called.

  “Through the door of a box car,” some one else amended.

  “You’ll be up here long enough, old fellow. You ought to come from my part of the country, King. They do a lot of cutting and shooting there.”

  “Yeh.” King Cole was ironic. “They do a lot of cuttin’ and shootin.’ They cut around the corner and shoot for home.”

  Kahl laughed exultantly. He felt that at last the time he had given to training was to be of some purpose. He abandoned trying to open the tin of meat because he feared that he would dull his bayonet. And he wanted it to be sharp, so sharp. Those dirty Huns. He drew his finger along the edge of the shiny piece of steel. That would cut, all right. That wouldn’t be deflected by a coat-button from piercing the intestines.

  Lieutenant Bedford, bent forward as usual, the end of his nose wiggling nervously, came among them with Sergeants Ryan and Harriman.

  “There won’t be any smoking or any matches lighted after dark to-night, fellows. We are only about a mile from the German front line. As near as I can make out they are advancing and it is our job to stop them. We’ll probably move forward some time after dark, so have your stuff by your side.”

  “When do we eat. Won’t we get any chow all night?”

  “The galley is in the town back of us. They are cooking up some slum, and it ought to be brought up here pretty soon.” He walked away.

  “There’s nothing like a good kick in the face to make you forget your little troubles.” Bullis summed up the feeling of the platoon.

  Kahl, industriously, was working the bolt of his rifle back and forth, pouring drops of oil in the chamber and upon the lock. He leaned toward Hicks and remarked in an undertone: “Hicks, old fellow, if Kitty Kahl doesn’t earn a Croix de Guerre to-morrow his mother will be without a son.”

  “What do you want one of those things for, Kahl? You can buy ’em for five francs.”

  “But you can’t earn one of them with five francs.”

  “But what do you want with one of them? What good are they?”

  Hicks, perhaps, was insincere. One might want a decoration and be delighted to have it, but intentionally to go after it appealed to him in the light of absurdity.

  As Lieutenant Redford departed, each man drew inside himself. Merely to observe them, one would have believed that they were concerned with profound thoughts. A Y. M. C. A. secretary would have told himself that the men were thinking of their homes and families, praying to God, and the
Y. M. C. A. General Pershing would have charged them with possessing a fierce, burning desire to exterminate the Germans. The regimental chaplain—he had come to the regiment from an Episcopal pulpit—would have said that they were capitulating their sins and supplicating God for mercy.

  While it was yet light Sergeants Harriman and Ryan and Lieutenant Bedford discussed aloud the plans that had been tentatively given them for the night, but as objects in their line of vision lost their distinctness and became vague, mysterious figures, they lowered their voices to a whisper. Lieutenant Bedford peered at his wrist-watch.

  “It’s time to go. Better break out the men, Harriman.” Sergeant Harriman crept along the road to the clump of woods where the platoon was huddled.

  “All right, men,” he whispered hoarsely; “it’s time to shove off. Has everybody got his trench tools?”

  “I’ve lost my shovel.”

  “I didn’t mean you, Gillespie. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t fastened on. Is any one missing any of their equipment?”

  There was no answer.

  “All right. Form in a column of twos and follow me.” Sergeant Harriman started off, and the men, who had risen, fell in behind him.

  Until this time all had been quiet, but now the machine-guns, unmistakably Maxims, began an intermittent fire. It seemed to be a signal for the rifles, for now and again one of them would crack pungently somewhere in the dark.

  The platoon was marching cautiously over the hill to the town in front of them.

  “Stand fast!” Sergeant Ryan called out sharply. A rocket was fired, rose high in the air, and then, the parachute spreading out, floated slowly to earth, lighting up the ground for several hundreds of yards on each side. As soon as it had reached the ground the platoon marched on. They passed through the town, and, as they were leaving, a covey of shells whirred softly over their heads and landed among the ruins with a terrific explosion. The remaining walls seemed to reverberate. It sounded as if they were rocking back and forth from the concussion.

  At the military crest of the hill the platoon stopped, joined on its left by the rest of the company. The company commander walked along the line, repeating, so that each man could hear: “You’ll have to hurry and dig in, men. It’s three hours until dawn, and if you haven’t got yourselves a place of safety by that time you will be unfortunate.”

  The men threw off their packs, unstrapped their trench tools, and set to work to make holes in the ground sufficiently deep to protect their bodies from rifle fire and from pieces of flying shell. As there were only four men in each squad equipped with trench tools, the other half commenced digging with their bayonets and scraping the dirt from the hole that they were making with the lid of their mess gear. But they worked furiously, and with the aid of the company commander and all of the subofficers, which consisted in telling them that they had just so much longer until dawn, each pair of men had made for themselves a hole in the ground from which they could manipulate their rifles without exposing their bodies to direct fire.

  When dawn broke the company presented to the enemy a slightly curved front of newly made holes, with the dirt thrown up in front of them for further protection.

  Across the valley, perhaps five hundred yards, was a thickly wooded hill, from which, as the light strengthened, the platoon could see figures running out into the field and then back again among the trees. Then, to the right, the Hotchkiss machine-guns began their wavering patter.

  From another woods, in front and to the left of the platoon, ran soldiers in frayed and dirty horizon-blue uniforms. Harriman pointed to the wooded hill where the scurrying figures had been seen. “Boche?” he asked.

  “Oui, Boche,” the men in the soiled uniforms answered.

  “Boche, Paris?” some one asked.

  “Oui.” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “Ce ne fait rien.”

  Doubtless the Frenchmen, Hicks thought, did not care; for seven days they had been forced to fall back, slowly and with heavy losses. There was little opportunity for sleep; and food, despite the conscientious efforts of the French cooks, was difficult to procure. They felt beaten.

  Another group of French soldiers hurried out of the woods, and, as the others had done, disappeared through the ruins of the village.

  It was quite light now, and the German artillery awoke. The first salvo of shells struck in the town. The second fell in the field to the right of the village.

  Overhead the wings of an airplane whirred. Under its wings were painted large black crosses. It fired a signal, rose again in the air, wheeled, and flew back.

  “Duck your heads,” shouted Sergeant Ryan, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. “They’ve got our range for sure.”

  They had. A moment later and a number of shells began a leisurely journey in the direction of the platoon. As they approached they lost their tardiness and fell shrieking, like some maddened demons, along the line of freshly dug dirt.

  “Anybody get hit?” Sergeant Ryan rose and looked around.

  “Stretcher bearer on the right!” Hicks yelled.

  In the hole next to his a curious thing had happened. A shell had grazed the top of the hole, buried itself in the dirt, and then back-fired. When the stretcher-bearers arrived they found that Hayes, one of the men in the hole, had part of his back torn off. Quickly they laid him prone on the stretcher and started for the town as swiftly as the weight of their burden would permit. The other man, Hartman, was still crouched in the position he had assumed when Sergeant Ryan called the warning.

  Hicks jumped over beside him. “Hartman,” he called. Hartman failed to respond. He put his arm around him and lifted him up. Hartman began to laugh horribly. Then great tears coursed through the mud on his cheeks.

  “Hartman, what’s the matter?”

  Hartman laughed again in the same manner. He had completely lost control of his muscles and would have fallen face downward if Hicks had not held him up.

  “Tell Lieutenant Bedford that there’s something the matter with Hartman,” Hicks shouted.

  The word was passed along.

  “Lieutenant Bedford says for you to get somebody else and take him back to the first-aid station. He’s probably shell-shocked.”

  “Oh, Gillespie,” Hicks called. “Come and help me take Hartman back to the first-aid station.”

  “Oh, Hicks, I can’t. I’m sick at my stomach. I couldn’t help carry anything.”

  “Well, Pugh—come on, Pugh, you help me.”

  And Pugh got out of his hole, a few yards away, and ran over. Both men, one holding his legs and the other his shoulders, tried to dodge the stream of machine-gun bullets as they hurried the shell-shocked man to the dressing station.

  In the village there was greater safety—cellars to hide in, and there to escape the flying pieces of shells that fell into the town at short intervals.

  Hicks and Pugh rested for a moment, filled their canteens with water, and started back. Half-way to the platoon they found a Frenchman lying upon his back.

  “A moi, à moi,” he was groaning scarcely above a whisper.

  “What’s the mattah, buddy,” Pugh asked.

  “. . . par le gaz . . . par le gaz.”

  “He says he’s been gassed, Pugh. Let’s take him back, too.”

  “Here, buddy, do you want a drink of watah?” Pugh asked.

  The Frenchman drank greedily.

  “By God,” Pugh said, “that’s the first Frog I’ve ever seen that would drink water.”

  They carried him to the dressing station, and after they had explained to the captain of the Medical Corps where they had found him, in what a desperate condition he was, and that there was nothing else to do with him, the Frenchman was finally accepted.

  “We can’t fill this place up with all kinds of people,” the medical officer objected. “We’ll have a hard-enough time tak
ing care of our own men in a few minutes.”

  Pugh, disgusted, emitted a stream of tobacco juice, shrugged his shoulder, turned on his heel.

  “Come on, Hicksy, let’s get back where there’s white men.”

  Their hearts racing madly, they reached their holes without being struck by the machine-gun bullets that sang deadly songs all around. After the first terrific salvo, the German artillery, for some unknown reason, had stopped.

  The skirmishing on the right, which the platoon had witnessed in the early morning, seemed to have been carried within the woods. A few waves of pigmy-like figures had walked slowly toward the wooded hill, and by the time their lines arrived, although considerably thinned, the gray defenders of the hill were to be seen no more.

  Now that they were no longer targets, Hicks walked over to where Ryan was squatted in his hole.

  “This is a hell of a note, isn’t it, Ryan? To have to lie like this all day and not get to fire a shot?”

  “You’ll get a chance to fire plenty of shots, damn it. Some poor fool is making our regiment attack without a barrage. Did you see the outfit over on the right that went up that hill? That was the third battalion, and I’ll bet there’s not a third of the men left. Well, we’ll go over most any time.”

  “But, Ryan, that’s murder, not to have a barrage. What can these fool officers be thinking of?”

  “Glory,” Ryan answered.

  Late in the afternoon the company commander passed the word along the line that the men would be permitted to eat one of their boxes of hard bread, but nothing else.

  “Who the hell wants to eat any of that damned stuff?”

  “God, my hardtack laid in the trenches for six weeks, and even them damned rats wouldn’t eat it.”

  The platoon had recovered its spirits, its “morale,” as the white-collared fighters for democracy often spoke of it.

  As night was coming on, a noise was heard in the grass between the men and the ruined village. It coughed tentatively, then decisively.

  “Who’s back there?”