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Page 15
The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in
battle. He saw his salvation in such a change. Hence this
waiting was an ordeal to him. He was in a fever of impatience.
He considered that there was denoted a lack of purpose on the
part of the generals. He began to complain to the tall soldier.
"I can't stand this much longer," he cried. "I don't see what
good it does to make us wear out our legs for nothin'." He wished
to return to camp, knowing that this affair was a blue demonstration;
or else to go into a battle and discover that he had been a fool
in his doubts, and was, in truth, a man of traditional courage.
The strain of present circumstances he felt to be intolerable.
The philosophical tall soldier measured a sandwich of cracker and
pork and swallowed it in a nonchalant manner. "Oh, I suppose we
must go reconnoitering around the country jest to keep 'em from
getting too close, or to develop 'em, or something."
"Huh!" said the loud soldier.
"Well," cried the youth, still fidgeting, "I'd rather do anything
'most than go tramping 'round the country all day doing no good
to nobody and jest tiring ourselves out."
"So would I," said the loud soldier. "It ain't right. I tell
you if anybody with any sense was a-runnin' this army it--"
"Oh, shut up!" roared the tall private. "You little fool. You
little damn' cuss. You ain't had that there coat and them pants
on for six months, and yet you talk as if--"
"Well, I wanta do some fighting anyway," interrupted the other.
"I didn't come here to walk. I could 'ave walked to home--
'round an' 'round the barn, if I jest wanted to walk."
The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if taking
poison in despair.
But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and
contented. He could not rage in fierce argument in the presence
of such sandwiches. During his meals he always wore an air of
blissful contemplation of the food he had swallowed. His spirit
seemed then to be communing with the viands.
He accepted new environment and circumstance with great coolness,
eating from his haversack at every opportunity. On the march he
went along with the stride of a hunter, objecting to neither
gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when he had
been ordered away from three little protective piles of earth
and stone, each of which had been an engineering feat worthy of
being made sacred to the name of his grandmother.
In the afternoon, the regiment went out over the same ground it
had taken in the morning. The landscape then ceased to threaten
the youth. He had been close to it and become familiar with it.
When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his old fears
of stupidity and incompetence reassailed him, but this time
he doggedly let them babble. He was occupied with his problem,
and in his deperation he concluded that the stupidity did not
greatly matter.
Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get
killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out
of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest,
and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have
made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed.
He would die; he would go to some place where he would be understood.
It was useless to expect appreciation of his profound and fine sense from
such men as the lieutenant. He must look to the grave for comprehension.
The skirmish fire increased to a long clattering sound. With it
was mingled far-away cheering. A battery spoke.
Directly the youth could see the skirmishers running. They were
pursued by the sound of musketry fire. After a time the hot,
dangerous flashes of the rifles were visible. Smoke clouds went
slowly and insolently across the fields like observant phantoms.
The din became crescendo, like the roar of an oncoming train.
A brigade ahead of them and on the right went into action with a
rending roar. It was as if it had exploded. And thereafter it
lay stretched in the distance behind a long gray wall, that one
was obliged to look twice at to make sure that it was smoke.
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