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Page 33
CHAPTER IV. When Eyes Were No Use
"Yes, it's an easy enough trade to pick up," lectured Top-
Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army. "You've just got to
remember a few things. But you've got to keep on remembering
those few, all the time. If you forget one of 'em, it's the last
bit of forgetting you're ever likely to do."
Top-Sergeant Mahan, of the mixed French-and-American regiment
known as "Here-We-Come," was squatting at ease on the trench
firing-step. From that professorial seat he was dispensing
useful knowledge to a group of fellow-countrymen-newly arrived
from the base, to pad the "Here-We-Come" ranks, which had been
thinned at the Rache attack.
"What sort of things have we got to remember, Sergeant?" jauntily
asked a lanky Missourian. "We've got the drill pretty pat; and
the trench instructions and--"
"Gee!" ejaculated Mahan. "I had no idea of that! Then why don't
you walk straight ahead into Berlin? If you know all you say you
do, about war, there's nothing more for you to learn. I'll drop a
line to General Foch and suggest to him that you rookies be
detailed to teach the game to us oldsters."
"I didn't mean to be fresh," apologized the jaunty one. "Won't
you go ahead and tell us the things we need to remember?"
"Well," exhorted Mahan, appeased by the newcomer's humility,
"there aren't so many of them, after all. Learn to duck, when you
hear a Minnie grunt or a whizzbang cut loose; or a five-nine
begin to whimper. Learn not to bother to duck when the rifles get
to jabbering--for you'll never hear the bullet that gets you.
Study the nocturnal habits of machine-guns and the ways of
snipers and the right time not to play the fool. And keep saying
to yourself: 'The bullet ain't molded that can get ME!' Mean it
when you say it. When you've learned those few things, the rest
of the war-game is dead easy."
"Except," timidly amended old Sergeant Vivier, the gray little
Frenchman, "except when eyes are--are what you call it, no use."
"That's right," assented Mahan. "In the times when eyes are no
use, all rules fail. And then the only thing you can do is to
trust to your Yankee luck. I remember--"
"'When eyes are no use'?" repeated the recruit. "If you mean
after dark, at night--haven't we got the searchlights and the
starshells and all that?"
"Son," replied Mahan, "we have. Though I don't see how you ever
guessed such an important secret. But since you know everything,
maybe you'll just kindly tell us what good all the lights in the
world are going to do us when the filthy yellow-gray fog begins
to ooze up out of the mud and the shell-holes, and the filthy
gray mist oozes down from the clouds to meet it. Fog is the one
thing that all the war-science won't overcome. A fogpenetrator
hasn't been invented yet. If it had been, there'd be many a husky
lad living today, who has gone West, this past few years, on
account of the fogs. Fog is the boche's pet. It gives Fritzy a
lovely chance to creep up or, us. It--"
"It is the helper of US, too," suggested old Vivier. "More than
one time, it has kept me safe when I was on patrol. And did it
not help to save us at Rache, when--"
"The fog may have helped us, one per cent, at Rache," admitted
Mahan. "But Bruce did ninety-nine per cent of the saving."
"A Scotch general?" asked the recruit, as Vivier nodded cordial
affirmation of Mahan's words, and as others of the old-timers
muttered approval.
"No," contradicted Mahan. "A Scotch collie. If you were dry
behind the ears, in this life, you wouldn't have to ask who Bruce
is."
"I don't understand," faltered the rookie, suspicious of a
possible joke.
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