Part 3 (2/2)
”Don't you know you have to be clean and shaved and ready for inspection every Sat.u.r.day morning at nine?”
”I was cleaning the barracks, sir.”
”To teach you not to answer back when an officer addresses you....” The officer s.p.a.ced his words carefully, lingering on them. As he spoke he glanced out of the corner of his eye at his superior and noticed the major was frowning. His tone changed ever so slightly. ”If this ever occurs again you may be sure that disciplinary action will be taken....
Attention there!” At the other end of the barracks a man had moved.
Again, amid absolute silence, could be heard the clanking of the officers' heels as the inspection continued.
”Now, fellows, all together,” cried the ”Y” man who stood with his arms stretched wide in front of the movie screen. The piano started jingling and the roomful of crowded soldiers roared out:
”Hail, Hail, the gang's all here; We're going to get the Kaiser, We're going to get the Kaiser, We're going to get the Kaiser, Now!”
The rafters rang with their deep voices.
The ”Y” man twisted his lean face into a facetious expression.
”Somebody tried to put one over on the 'Y' man and sing 'What the h.e.l.l do we care?' But you do care, don't you, Buddy?” he shouted.
There was a little rattle of laughter.
”Now, once more,” said the ”Y” man again, ”and lots of guts in the get and lots of kill in the Kaiser. Now all together.... ”
The moving pictures had begun. John Andrews looked furtively about him, at the face of the Indiana boy beside him intent on the screen, at the tanned faces and the close-cropped heads that rose above the ma.s.s of khaki-covered bodies about him. Here and there a pair of eyes glinted in the white flickering light from the screen. Waves of laughter or of little exclamations pa.s.sed over them. They were all so alike, they seemed at moments to be but one organism. This was what he had sought when he had enlisted, he said to himself. It was in this that he would take refuge from the horror of the world that had fallen upon him. He was sick of revolt, of thought, of carrying his individuality like a banner above the turmoil. This was much better, to let everything go, to stamp out his maddening desire for music, to humble himself into the mud of common slavery. He was still tingling with sudden anger from the officer's voice that morning: ”Sergeant, who is this man?” The officer had stared in his face, as a man might stare at a piece of furniture.
”Ain't this some film?” Chrisfield turned to him with a smile that drove his anger away in a pleasant feeling of comrades.h.i.+p.
”The part that's comin's fine. I seen it before out in Frisco,” said the man on the other side of Andrews. ”Gee, it makes ye hate the Huns.”
The man at the piano jingled elaborately in the intermission between the two parts of the movie.
The Indiana boy leaned in front of John Andrews, putting an arm round his shoulders, and talked to the other man.
”You from Frisco?”
”Yare.”
”That's G.o.ddam funny. You're from the Coast, this feller's from New York, an' Ah'm from ole Indiana, right in the middle.”
”What company you in?”
”Ah ain't yet. This feller an me's in Casuals.”
”That's a h.e.l.l of a place.... Say, my name's Fuselli.”
”Mahn's Chrisfield.”
”Mine's Andrews.”
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