3 books to know World War I. John Dos Passos
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when he had just shaved. At last the tenseness of his mind slackened; he thought of women for a moment, of a fair-haired girl he'd seen from the train, and then suddenly crushing sleepiness closed down on him and everything went softly warmly black, as he drifted off to sleep with no sense but the coldness of one side and the warmth of his bunkie's body on the other.
In the middle of the night he awoke and crawled out of the tent. Andrews followed him. Their teeth chattered a little, and they stretched their legs stiffly. It was cold, but the mist had vanished. The stars shone brilliantly. They walked out a little way into the field away from the bunch of tents to make water. A faint rustling and breathing noise, as of animals herded together, came from the sleeping regiment. Somewhere a brook made a shrill gurgling. They strained their ears, but they could hear no guns. They stood side by side looking up at the multitudes of stars.
“That's Orion,” said Andrews.
“What?”
“That bunch of stars there is called Orion. D'you see 'em. It's supposed to look like a man with a bow, but he always looks to me like a fellow striding across the sky.”
“Some stars tonight, ain't there? Gee, what's that?”
Behind the dark hills a glow rose and fell like the glow in a forge.
“The front must be that way,” said Andrews, shivering. “I guess we'll know tomorrow.”
“Yes; tomorrow night we'll know more about it,” said Andrews. They stood silent a moment listening to the noise the brook made.
“God, it's quiet, ain't it? This can't be the front. Smell that?”
“What is it?”
“Smells like an apple tree in bloom somewhere.... Hell, let's git in, before our blankets git cold.”
Andrews was still staring at the group of stars he had said was Orion.
Chrisfield pulled him by the arm. They crawled into their tent again, rolled up together and immediately were crushed under an exhausted sleep.
As far ahead of him as Chrisfield could see were packs and heads with caps at a variety of angles, all bobbing up and down with the swing of the brisk marching time. A fine warm rain was falling, mingling with the sweat that ran down his face. The column had been marching a long time along a straight road that was worn and scarred with heavy traffic. Fields and hedges where clusters of yellow flowers were in bloom had given place to an avenue of poplars. The light wet trunks and the stiff branches hazy with green filed by, interminable, as interminable as the confused tramp of feet and jingle of equipment that sounded in his ears.
“Say, are we goin' towards the front?”
“Goddamned if I know.”
“Ain't no front within miles.”
Men's sentences came shortly through their heavy breathing.
The column shifted over to the side of the road to avoid a train of motor trucks going the other way. Chrisfield felt the heavy mud spurt up over him as truck after truck rumbled by. With the wet back of one hand he tried to wipe it off his face, but the grit, when he rubbed it, hurt his skin, made tender by the rain. He swore long and whiningly, half aloud. His rifle felt as heavy as an iron girder.
They entered a village of plaster-and-timber houses. Through open doors they could see into comfortable kitchens where copper pots gleamed and where the floors were of clean red tiles. In front of some of the houses were little gardens full of crocuses and hyacinths where box-bushes shone a very dark green in the rain. They marched through the square with its pavement of little yellow rounded cobbles, its grey church with a pointed arch in the door, its cafes with names painted over them. Men and women looked out of doors and windows. The column perceptibly slackened its speed, but kept on, and as the houses dwindled and became farther apart along the road the men's hope of stopping vanished. Ears were deafened by the confused tramp of feet on the macadam road. Men's feet seemed as lead, as if all the weight of the pack hung on them. Shoulders, worn callous, began to grow tender and sore under the constant sweating. Heads drooped. Each man's eyes were on the heels of the man ahead of him that rose and fell, rose and fell endlessly. Marching became for each man a personal struggle with his pack, that seemed to have come alive, that seemed something malicious and overpowering, wrestling to throw him.
The rain stopped and the sky brightened a little, taking on pale yellowish lights as if the clouds that hid the sun were growing thin.
The column halted at the edge of a group of farms and barns that scattered along the road. The men sprawled in all directions along the roadside hiding the bright green grass with the mud-color of their uniforms.
Chrisfield lay in the field beside the road, pressing his hot face into the wet sprouting clover. The blood throbbed through his ears. His arms and legs seemed to cleave to the ground, as if he would never be able to move them again. He closed his eyes. Gradually a cold chill began stealing through his body. He sat up and slipped his arms out of the harness of his pack. Someone was handing him a cigarette, and he sniffed a little acrid sweet smoke.
Andrews was lying beside him, his head propped against his pack, smoking, and poking a cigarette towards his friend with a muddy hand. His blue eyes looked strangely from out the flaming red of his mud-splotched face.
Chrisfield took the cigarette, and fumbled in his pocket for a match.
“That nearly did it for me,” said Andrews.
Chrisfield grunted. He pulled greedily on the cigarette.
A whistle blew.
Slowly the men dragged themselves off the ground and fell into line, drooping under the weight of their equipment.
The companies marched off separately.
Chrisfield overheard the lieutenant saying to a sergeant:
“Damn fool business that. Why the hell couldn't they have sent us here in the first place?”
“So we ain't goin' to the front after all?” said the sergeant.
“Front, hell!” said the lieutenant. The lieutenant was a small man who looked like a jockey with a coarse red face which, now that he was angry, was almost purple.
“I guess they're going to quarter us here,” said somebody.
Immediately everybody began saying: “We're going to be quartered here.”
They stood waiting in formation a long while, the packs cutting into their backs and shoulders. At last the sergeant shouted out:
“All right, take yer stuff upstairs.” Stumbling on each others' heels they climbed up into a dark loft, where the air was heavy with the smell of hay and with an acridity of cow manure from the stables below. There was a little straw in the corners, on which those who got there first spread their blankets.
Chrisfield and Andrews tucked themselves in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into the barns by every door.
An officer went up to her, a little red book in his hand. A conversation about some matter proceeded painfully. The officer grew very red. Andrews threw back his head and laughed, luxuriously rolling from side to side in the straw. Chrisfield laughed too, he hardly knew why. Over their heads they could hear the feet of pigeons on the roof, and a constant drowsy rou-cou-cou-cou.
Through the barnyard smells began to drift... the greasiness of food cooking in the field kitchen.
“Ah hope they give us somethin' good to eat,” said Chrisfield. “Ah'm hongry as a thrasher.”
“So am I,” said Andrews.
“Say, Andy, you kin talk their language a li'l', can't ye?”