A demonstration in the proper method of “about facing”A demonstration in the proper method of “about facing”
My self-consciousness fled immediately. I was mad. I wanted to talk back, and make a few remarks about the Sergeant and the stump and things. But I suddenly thought of a tour of kitchen police and restrained myself. Instead I about faced with such energy that the Sergeant knew I was boiling inside, and being a decent sort of a chap, he sent me back to the ranks after a couple of demonstrations, instead of keeping me out there forfifteen minutes as I have seen them do to some fellows.
After that I felt more at ease in the front rank. All morning long we ambled across the landscape, doing squad and company movements. It was just drill, drill, drill, for fifty out of every sixty minutes, the ten minutes being allowed as rest periods. We reviewed all our previous instructions and worked up to the point of forming company fronts, with the movements of right and left front into line and on right into line, and as pivot man, I think I did mighty well. Our squad never stepped off a pace ahead of time on any of the formations. And when we were marching back to the barracks at mess time, the Sergeant came up beside me, and remarked, by way of apology for hauling me out of the ranks earlier in the morning, that I was doing good pivot work.
Perhaps we didn’t enjoy mess! Three helpings of navy beans for me with pineapple marmalade, and a piece of salt pork on the side, not to mention three cups of coffee and three slices of bread. I sure had luck on the mess line to-day.
This afternoon the First Lieutenant tookcharge of the company, and he had us traipsing all over the landscape again, doing the same sort of close order manœuvres, and when we lined up just before retreat he announced that we would have rifles to-morrow morning.
It is interesting to see how rumours travel and gather force in the barracks. Some one, somehow, heard that an artist and a stenographer from our company are to sail for France in a day or two. Of course, all my friends have come to the conclusion that I am the artist. A chap told me about it at mess this evening, and since then several dozen have looked me up to shake hands with me and tell me good-bye, with such remarks as: “Hear you have orders to sail for France to-morrow; great.” “They tell me you got a commission from Washington and that you are going across in a day or two,” or, “Say, you’re a lucky chap; where’d you get the drag down in Washington?”
But these queries fail absolutely to thrill me. I am quite calm and undisturbed. I deny any “drag” whatever, and I know that I am not the artist mentioned in the order for transfer, if there is any such order, which I doubt. This is only about thenth time that samerumour has been afloat as a result of which I have bade good-bye to my friends about every other day only to discover myself still with them a week later with the same old rumour bobbing up again.
I’m really a soldier. I know the manual of arms.
This morning, true to the First Lieutenant’s prediction, we drilled with rifles and now I am quite convinced of the truth of the old saying that a gun is dangerous without lock, stock, or barrel. Fat turned around suddenly when he had his rifle over his shoulder and poked the muzzle of it into my mouth; a regular Happy Hooligan performance, and now I have a split (and considerably puffed) lip and a loose tooth to my credit in this horrible war.
We were marched over to one of the infantry barracks on the edge of the big parade grounds and there we found our rifles; I mean ours for the day only, because there are hardly enough in camp to equip us all yet and we have to take turns using them. In the same waythere is only one field piece to each artillery company, but that doesn’t seem to worry the artillery men much.
They are doing some real drilling over on the other side of the camp. I was surprised to discover a company at work digging trenches, another company practising throwing hand grenades, with stones representing the deadly Mill’s bombs, still another group constructing parapets of sand bags, and working out machine gun emplacements, and in the distance artillery companies hovering about a sleek looking gun, learning the complicated parts and where and how the animals are served.
Krags, instead of Springfields, are the rifles available for drilling purposes here, and for the first hour this morning we devoted our time to learning the floor plan of the thing. I was getting along famously until Fat interrupted my investigations with the muzzle of his weapon.
Soon after that we started drilling. And I think it is to our credit that before noon we had mastered all the movements and that our pieces snapped up to position with real vigour.
“Let me hear them hands slap them pieces,” said the Sergeant; then “Ri—sholler—harms! One-two-three-four! Pep, that’s it, pep an’ snap. Slap ’em hard. Ordah—harms! One-two-three!Donedrop ’em—doneslam ’em down. Nex’ man slams ’em gits kitchen p’lice.”
So we drilled until our arms ached, and rifles that weighed about eight pounds at the beginning of the drill seemed to have increased to fifty pounds, and felt as long as telephone poles. Perhaps we weren’t glad when our First Lieutenant put a stop to the punishment and started us in the general direction of the mess hall.
And we had beef stew for dinner; beef stew with rich brown gravy, such as our old biscuit shooter alone can make.
But after mess we were back at it again. Only this time it was bayonet practice, but not of the variety pictured in most magazines. We haven’t reached the stage of charging trenches and swinging bundles of sticks. Such advanced work comes later.
Bayonets are awkward, ugly things, and I could not help being grateful that Fat took itinto his head to poke me in the mouth with his rifle this morning instead of this afternoon. If he had waited until after mess he wouldn’t have split my lip; he would have cut my head off. When I saw him with bayonet fixed I gave him a wide radius of action. Indeed I avoided him as if he were a plague.
In open, or extended, order we lined up on the parade grounds in front of one of these movable elevated platforms. Our Second Lieutenant mounted this, and with a bayonetted rifle in hand went through the various lunges, thrusts and parries of the bayonet manual, meanwhile giving us a lecture, to the effect that no matter what the War Department intended to do with us, a knowledge of bayonet fighting would be essential. He assured us that the logical weapon for an American soldier was the rifle. One of our birthrights is markmanship and another is bayonet fighting. He briefly cantered over a century and a half of history of the Republic and pointed out how we had won fame and honour with bullet and bayonet, and he wound up by telling us that every American soldier should prepare himself so that he would be as dangerous to fool withas a stick of dynamite. Picture good-natured Fat impersonating a stick of dynamite.
Then we went at it. We lunged and thrust and parried until perspiration began to stand out on our foreheads. From the corner of my eye I had a vision of Fat trying to disguise himself as a high explosive. Every time he lunged, he would scowl viciously and emit a loud grunt. I discovered a few moments ago, however, that it was a case of over-eating at mess time that caused him to grunt and frown every time he tried to move very fast; not a desire to look ferocious, although I guess it passed for that in the eyes of the instructor.
And now I’m told we are to get this sort of training daily for a long period; close order formation in the morning, with rifle and bayonet drill in the afternoon and later on we will do skirmish work, trench work and open order work with rifles. Some of the infantry companies are already doing that. I was treated to the spectacle of two companies scurrying across the upper end of the parade grounds like so many rabbits. Now and then they would fling themselves down on their stomachs andbegin snapping away merrily with empty rifles at an imaginary enemy.
We are a tired-looking company to-night. Already half the cots are filled with men, some of them snoring lustily and it is only a quarter to ten.
There are a lot of things calculated to stir a chap’s sentimental streak about this camp, particularly the nights; moonlight nights like to-night for instance. Every hard outline of the huge place is softened under the blue-black mantle of night, and the disagreeable things are lost in the heavy shadows and the moonlight floods the open places, and glistens on the rows upon rows of tin roofs and tall, gaunt-looking tin smoke-stacks. Watch-fires (a sanitary precaution) blaze in their deep holes in the rear of each barracks building, and the lonesome fire-guard, bundled in his overcoat and with rifle over his shoulder, stands silhouetted against the night sky beside each flaring pit.
Out on the main streets of the camp are thousands of fellows in khaki, walking aimlessly upand down, while in the by-streets between the barracks buildings one sees shadowy figures and glowing cigarette ends moving about in the darkness. Through the tiny panes of each barracks window, partly obscured by overcoats and sweaters which dangle from pegs inside, filters a warm yellow light, and as one moves down the row, one hears from one building the music of an accordion and the rhythmic shuffle of feet which tells of a “stag” dance being held in the mess hall; while from another comes the soft plunk-plunking of a banjo and the occasional drone of a mouth organ that seeks after harmony, but only succeeds with an effort.
Off to the right toward the parade grounds some fellows are singing and their songs sound mighty good in the moonlight. And from far beyond where the thick pine woods stand out black against the sky comes faintly the hooting of a distant owl.
On the main streets that skirt the outer edge of the cantonment on three sides, the arc lights glisten, like rows of far off diamonds against the velvet of a jewel box, and here and there, where two twinkle, like low-hung stars, standout the Y.M. shacks where the men are gathering for an evening’s recreation.
It is wonderful to wander out such nights as these. Bundled in a sweater to keep out the chill of evening, and with only my pipe for company, I often go tramping off through the by-streets of the camp. The smoke of the hundreds of watch-fires is wafted to me on every breeze and in wood smoke there is a charm; the charm of camping out. Never in my life will I smell the smoke of burning pine wood, but that these nights will come trooping through my memory, and I’m certain that I will be homesick then and want to come back and live them all over again.
And the things I often see:—the fire-guard for instance, who alone out there behind the barracks was trying hard to read a letter by the light of his flickering watch-fire. Was it a letter he had just received and could not wait to open, or was it a letter that he had read many, many times before and was rereading once again? Then the lonesome dog who sat out in the company street and stared up solemnly at the moon, like a lone wolf on the prairie. What instinctswere being waked within him by the moonlight? And the silhouette through the window of the chap sitting on his cot patiently plying needle and thread and the two fellows who leaned against the jacketed field piece in front of an artillery barracks and talked in whispers, while through the opened door of the buildings on either hand came the noise of a rousing good time within.
Then the tramp up Tower Hill, where the headquarters building with its darkened windows like sightless eyes stands out from the sparse remains of the pine woods, flecked here and there with patches of moonlight.
Far off across the great camp, and across the tops of the pines one can dimly see from the top of the hill the ocean with the moonlight flashing on its surface, and occasionally comes a breath of chilled salt air that stirs a longing, vague and fleeting, as the ocean has always stirred a longing in the soul of the adventurer. From here one can look down upon the great camp. Thousands and thousands of roofs stand out in the moonlight, and the watch-fires twinkle in orderly rows up and down each camp street. Far off to the left are the bigmachine shops and forges of the construction company, the forge fires glowing red against the night, while faintly comes the far-off ring of anvils. Those forge fires, like the bakery fires, never die.
To the eastward is the railroad terminal with its panting engines and its medley of noises, while nearer at hand but in the same direction is the transport headquarters with its ceaselessly moving caravan of rumbling, grumbling army trucks. All combines to make a picture that holds one spell-bound.
The days here are pleasant indeed, but the nights are almost intoxicating. They cast a spell upon me and leave a memory that can never fade.
This place looks like a growing mining town somewhere out West, but for real atmosphere, the civilian camp, outside the reservation, has the cantonment looking really civilized. I went out there this evening after mess; for I heard that there was a cigar store included in the outfit, and the impression I got was a lasting one. Everything of the frontier was there save thesaloons and the gambling halls. Shacks, tents (rows upon rows of them), lean-tos and all forms of domiciles. And the men who walked the streets were of every variety, including real lumber jabs in mackinaws and spiked boots, who had come down to cut away the timber; Italians, Poles, Swedes, Slavs and what not, and a real cowgirl, in short skirts and high leather boots, with a silk handkerchief scarf, sombrero and a big thirty-eight strapped to her hip. She, I learned, runs a motor bus between the civilian camp and the nearest towns.
Cook fires twinkled outside of the tents, lights showed through the canvas walls reflecting the huge, grotesque, shadowy figures of the occupants. From one emanated the strains of an accordion and from another the babble of voices that suggested a quarrel over a card game.
I found the cigar store. I found other stores, too, just shacks thrown together, but carrying a stock of everything in the line of wearing apparel and eatables. One displayed the sign of “Jack’s Unsurpassable Lunch,” another “The Elite,” and another “The Emporium.” There were hundreds of squalid booth-like structuresbesides, where a host of curious things were for sale to the hordes of big-fisted, deep-chested men who were brought there to build the cantonment. But they tell me that the civilian camp is fast breaking up now, for the cantonment is almost completed. The remount stables for the artillery, the refrigerating plant and the huge bakery are all that remain to be built and the labourers are leaving in big groups.
The temporary bakery (I passed it to-night on my way back to camp) is represented by a double line of tents, before each of which is a big field baking oven, its coal fire glowing from lower doors like huge, red eyes and its gaunt smoke-stack reaching upward to terminate in a cloud of black smoke which ascends higher and higher in long, graceful spirals until it is lost in the darkness of the night.
Before these ovens work the bakers, in khaki, of course, but each swathed in a flowing white apron. With sleeves rolled up and shirts opened at the throat, they wield their long bakers’ paddles, and as they pass to and fro in the dull red firelight, they look elfish and grotesque; exactly like a lot of gnome bakersoff in the “nowheres” baking bread for some ferocious ogre who bids them work incessantly.
And these loaves they bake are indeed loaves for ogres; huge affairs two feet long and as big ’round their rich brown girth as pumpkins. In “sheets” of a dozen each they are brought from the fire and placed steaming hot on a nearby table where an expert breaks them apart and tests the tenderness of their fibre and searches for signs of doughiness. These bakers are all of the Regular Army now, but not long since czars of dingy cellar bakeries located anywhere from Boston to San Francisco. But the ogre has called them together and here like gnomes they work, eight hours each in three shifts and the oven fires are kept burning always.
Still we drill, drill, drill. This morning was spent in manœuvring and tramping over the wet and soggy countryside in company formation, and this afternoon, by way of variety, we were given a few hours fatigue duty in the line of uprooting more stumps and gnarled tentacles, that seem to have rooted themselves in China. But our hands are hard and leathery now and our muscles no longer creak and painunder the stress. I’ve added four pounds to my former weight and I have never felt more fit in my life.
They seemed to have rooted themselves in ChinaThey seemed to have rooted themselves in China
The cost of high living here is enormous. The stoop-shouldered, shrewd-eyed, flinty-hearted Yankee clerks behind the broad counters of the “Post Exchange” disdain anything less than a quarter. Dimes and nickels are chicken-feed, and pennies—impossible. Ifa chap buys one apple at five cents or one pear or one banana (always green and a long way from being ripe) he has to hide himself in the crowd to escape the baleful eye of these grasping sharks. Five cent crackers sell two boxes for a quarter, penny candies are five cents each, cigars and cigarettes are considerably above normal in price and considerably below in quality, and ice cream sells for ten cents a gram.
But none of us has grown up. We are all like big boys and we spend with no thought of to-morrow. Mess over, we all hie out to the two main roads that lead to the “Post Exchange,” jingling coins in our trouser pockets. The “Exchange” itself is a long, low unpainted building like all other buildings here with tiny back country windows, half-obscured by garments hanging within which leave only a few dirty squares for the dull yellow light to show through.
The doors are broad and through them streams a never ending line of troopers, some coming, some going. Inside, the place resembles nothing more than a huge up-country general store with shelves upon shelves stackedhigh with cracker boxes, shoe boxes, hardware and goodness only knows what not, while from the rafters hang heavy coats, sweaters, lanterns, huge stalks of green bananas, hams, bacon, boots and a lot of useless things that only gullible soldiers who feel a yearning to spend their money really purchase. But this spending of money somehow seems to bring us closer to civilization for the moment and we join the churning mass of men within, whose hobnailed shoes produce a great pounding and scraping sound and whose voices are raised in a constant babble of conversation which only the sharp ting, ting of the cash register bells can punctuate.
We mill around with the crowd, and soon are pushed against a counter. Something attracts our eye. We feel a desire to possess it. We buy it, and start milling about the room again until presently we are near the door. Then we step out into the night again and join one of the groups of loiterers or sit about on boxes and piles of lumber, where we devour our purchase, if it happens to be in the line of crackers (which is usually the case), or admire it, if it happens to be a pocket flash lamp, a fountainpen or something else that we really never have had any use for.
The small-town idea prevails even in the city of thirty thousand lonesome men. The “Post Exchange” and the “Post Office” are the two centres of interest. First we wander to one, and then we wander to the other, then with time on our hands we join the stream of men going up one side of the road “just walkin’” and when we reach the point where most of the crowd turns back, we turn back, too, and continue our “walkin’,” with no particular place to go, until the streets begin to get deserted and it is time for the town to close up. Then we disappear, too, and for an hour occupy ourselves in the barracks until taps are sounded and lights are out, when we go to bed; the place I’m headed for now, so soon as I put the top on my fountain pen.
Sick CallSick Call
That’s the call that brings out all the shirkers. They line up in the morning and present all sorts of ailments from sore throat to heart disease.
The line is especially long on mornings when they know we are in for two hours of “settin’-ups” or when some especially hard detail such as camp orderly or kitchen police has been handed out. A day in the hospital will relieve one of all these duties. This morning I was on the long line. But I hasten to explain thatIwas sick (that’s what they all say, of course,) with chills and a scrapy feeling in my throat; and since we are forbidden to take any medicine of our own, I shame-facedly line up with the rest of them. There were about twenty all told and the doctor made short work of us.
“What’s the matter with you?” very cross.
“I-I-I-here—it hurts,” said one, pointing to his back and looking quite scared. The M. D. poked his finger into the spot designated.
“Man you’re not sick,” said the doctor in a very startling manner, “you’re almost dead, only you won’t lie down. You’ve dislocated a couple of vertibraes, ruptured a half-dozen ligaments and like as not you have a chronic case of pneumonia. The only thing that I can recommend for you is two hours of strenuous exercise. You may pull through and you may not.” Then, with a malicious grin, he turned to the next man and the first invalid shuffled off, mumbling something about horse doctors without any horse sense.
Two out of twenty of us got by. The rest went to work. I was one of the two. I had a slight temperature and an inflamed throat. Nothing serious, but report to the hospital. I did. And the best thing about the hospital was the fact that there were two sheets on the bed and I had an abbreviated flannel nightshirt to sleep in. Three big pills, the size of bullets and just as deadly, and then I turned in, went to sleep and slept right through mess time.
Four o’clock I was feeling very much better and ravenously hungry and at five o’clock I was discharged as cured. I don’t know what I was cured of, but I’m feeling much spryer just now after three helpings of beef stew and apple marmalade and I’m ready to turn in and sleep some more.
If there is one thing that I want to remember more than anything else about this Conscript Camp it is the spectacle I witnessed and took part in this evening.
Fancy if you can Tower Hill with its big headquarters building snuggled in among the scattered and gaunt pines, the tall, ungainly water-tank propped up on all too spindly-looking stilts. On top of this a single figure thrown in bold relief by the golden yellow light of a big watch-fire, beating time with his baton, and below him, clothing the slopes of the hill five thousand men, his chorus, thundering forth across the starlit night “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” That chorus was wonderful; thatcrowd was wonderful; everything about it was wonderful.
We were all singing; thousands of fellows in khaki, some snuggled in their big army overcoats, some puffed out like pouter pigeons with the sweaters they had piled on under their tunics against the cold chill of night. Intermingled were the lumber jacks and labourers from the civilian camp, most of them in gay mackinaws and caps; with now and then an officer immaculately clad in clean cut uniform, or a Y. M. C. A. man in grey-green suit with red circle and triangle gleaming in the firelight. And how well they could sing; I have never heard a more stirring chorus and as we raised our voices loud and clear shivery thrills raced up and down our spines, and we were stirred to the highest pitch of patriotic fervor. Indeed, there were some among us who could find no better way of expressing the emotion that swelled within save by tears. They cried. I was one of them.
“America” and “Dixie” and “Maryland” followed and every one produced its own thrill and its own heartache. Never was there anything more stirring, Never was there anythingfiner. We sang till our voices were husky and the great chorus surged loud and clear across the night, until it must have echoed against the crags of the Rhine and caused the Hun to shudder.
Then the breaking up of the big meeting, when groups detached themselves and wandered out of the fitful flicker of the dying firelight into the misty blue blackness of the night, still singing. Out through the streets of the camp we tramped, stepping to the cadence of our own songs. We were all happy, very, very happy and draft or no draft, down in our hearts we all knew that we were in the very place we were meant to be, and we were doing the very things that we should do, and that when the time came we would do other and greater things with as much eagerness and enthusiasm as we had sung up there on Tower Hill to-night.
The whole camp was singing even after the concert, but the character of the songs changed. “Over There” swelled forth everywhere and “The Yankees Are Coming” was chanted in every street. Out toward our own barracks our little group swung, passing the railroadsiding where, partly shrouded in the canvas jackets, new artillery pieces were waiting to be moved in the morning. A cheer for these and a cheer for everything and anything that suggested patriotism, and on we tramped, brimming over with enthusiasm.
And now I’m back to the barracks again, but the mysteries of the night and the spell of the whole wonderful occasion is still over me and I know I shall lie awake a long, long time and think and dream of all that waits for me in the not very distant future. And the promises I made myself up there on Tower Hill will all be fulfilled, that’s certain.
Momentous news. We of the headquarters company, or rather eighty-seven of us, start Monday on the first leg of that longed-for journey to France. We go to a Southern training camp where new units are being formed into which each of us will fit. And along with this news came the announcement that none of us will be given a pass to go home for a last good-bye. This has stirred the men more thanthe news of the transfer South. Several impromptu indignation meetings were held this morning and this afternoon, just after mess, a real demonstration took place in the mess hall and most of the eighty-seven of us were loud in our assertions that we would go home anyway, even though we were arrested for desertion afterward.
This little incident served to impress upon me more than anything else the freedom that is accorded the men of this new American Army, for behold, before the meeting broke up a Lieutenant came in and addressed us on the penalties for desertion, the difficulty of dealing with headstrong soldiers and similar subjects, and then when we all felt and looked like slackers he announced that although orders had gone forth that no passes were to be granted, our commanding officer, knowing our feeling in the matter, was at that time trying very hard to arrange to secure permission for the men to go home over Saturday night and Sunday. As I left the mess hall I wondered vaguely how such a mass meeting would have been treated in the German Army, for instance, and I thanked my lucky stars that I was an American.
But there are a thousand and one things remaining to be accomplished to-day. I have been hurrying from one place to another since reveille and now at taps all that I should do is not done yet. But to-morrow is another day.
First of all we were rushed off to receive our third and fourth inoculations together. Then came the announcement that we would be relieved of all our winter clothing and given a complete summer outfit instead, for it appears there is no need for woollens in this Southland camp to which we are going.
And between times, there were a score of personal things I wanted to do, not the least of which was to join the line of waiting men before the telephone booths in the Y. M. C. A. shacks to tell them at home the news of our going. In all this, poor Fat seems to be sadly left out, for he is not among the fellows who are to leave. He stands helplessly by and watches the hurry and bustle going on about him, and sometimes I think there is a sad, wistful sort of a look in his big, good-natured face, for I know he doesn’t like the idea of staying here when the snow begins to fall and winds whistle disconsolately around the corners of thebarracks building. I am glad thatIwill not have to spend the winter here and I’m sorry, too, that Fat is not to be with me.
A soldier-boy in his native hauntsA soldier-boy in his native haunts
To-day, for the first time since I have been here, I had visitors. Those at home, eager to get a glimpse of their soldier-boy in his native haunts, came down to see things as they are. I’m quite certain that the general arrangement of the barracks, with its cluttered appearance suggested by many pairs of shoes standing around and many hats and coats and old sweaters hanging about, did not accord with mother’s ideas of good housekeeping. And she assured me that many of the old rose, pink and baby blue comforters would not have suffered from a washing, all of which I had nevernoticed before, until she drew my attention to it. She intimated, too, that my dish towel and my hand towel would never testify as to my respectable up-bringing, and she felt that I should make a practice of taking off those abominably heavy trench shoes in the evening and putting on a pair of slippers which she would send down to me. She thought that a bath-robe might come in handy for lounging in the evening and perhaps after we got comfortably settled in our Southern quarters, she might send one of the big, roomy library chairs down to me, for she did not approve of one’s sitting on one’s bed the way most of us did. She deplored the total lack of chairs about the barracks and she was quite sure that taking an ice cold shower out in that horrible big tin building would certainly result in innumerable cases of influenza, if nothing more serious. She’s a dear old mother and I don’t know that I have ever appreciated her so much as I have since I’ve been down here.
Then with my visitors caring for themselves for a while, and mother chumming up with the always affable Fat, whom she took quite a fancy to, I hurried about my work of being re-outfittedwith summer uniforms. Fortunately they allowed me to retain my overcoat (which I received but a few days ago) until we are ready to entrain.
Then came the passes. The officer was successful and we who are to go South are given a release from duty until to-morrow night at retreat. Other passes were distributed, too, and Fat fortunate for once, yet unfortunate, got one to go home until Monday morning. But poor Fat! Still the military tailors lag and now that he has the pass that he has been trying to get for this last month, he cannot use it, for he is not properly uniformed to leave the cantonment, having still just his flannel shirt. He tried frantically to borrow parts of a uniform to fit him and while he could find a pair of breeches that he could get into, a jacket was lacking, so in disgust, and with a most unhappy smile, he gave it up and went over to the Y.M. telephone booth to ask his mother to come down and visit him over Sunday.
And to-night there are no taps for me, for I am home once more and writing this at my own desk. We all came home together and had abully trip and now, after the best dinner I have eaten in many a day, I shall see a real show at a real theatre, and sit up as late as I choose and when I go to bed I will be between clean sheets again and there will be no officers’ whistles to wake me in the morning.
Back again, but back to a sad and very unhappy barracks. Fat, poor, poor Fat, who felt downcast because he was not going South, has gone on a far longer journey. It is the first tragedy that has come into our life here in our barracks and with the thoughts of the breaking up of the big family on the morrow, and the homesickness, that most of us feel because of our all too brief trips home, has cast a gloom over us all.
Unfortunate Fat, done out of using his pass by the slowness of the army tailors, telephoned home yesterday to have his mother come out to see him. At train time this morning he was at the terminal awaiting her arrival. But in the shifting of the cars back and forth in the yard an accident happened and Fat, in the way ofit, was one of its victims. Both his legs were crushed and he was hurried away to the hospital.
Meanwhile, his grey-haired old mother arrived and stood about the terminal hour after hour wondering why he did not come for her, and it was not until late this afternoon that one of the boys in our company thought to go down and try and find her; which, fortunately, was not too late to bid her son good-bye.
And now we are on the eve of our departure. As I came through the terminal an hour ago the troop train, a long line of nondescript coaches, was being made up. As each car was made ready it was shunted into line by the ever-grumbling engine and to-morrow at daybreak all will be ready for us. Then we will go and some of us will be sorry, and some of us will be glad. As for myself, all that I can say is “Adieu, camp,” and if the place I am bound for, wherever it may be, holds the charms that I’ve found here, I’ll be happy.
The mere suggestion of troop movements has a thrill to it, and we have had a lot of thrills to-day.
I was alone in lineI was alone in line
After a long period of restless waiting, and good-byes to every one and everything about the old barracks, came the command to fall in. Then in summer uniforms, and each with a big blue barracks bag crowded with personal belongings, extra uniform, shoes, blanket and what not, on our shoulders, we lined up, shouted last farewells and stepped off, down the barracks street and out toward the railroad station. There was no whistling nor singing for we were all very solemn, and I was lonesome, for I was alone in line, the only member of our entire squad to go.
We came upon other columns of fellows,coming from other companies, bound with us for this Southern camp. On we marched to the terminal. Here confusion reigned for a while, for hundreds of men in khaki were scattered everywhere, all bending under blue duffel bags, and wondering what was to happen next.
But soon we were entrained, and then with locomotive whistles hooting, and heads bobbing from every car window, we said farewell to The Camp. And with the leave-taking our spirits seemed to rise, for there was singing and whistling and horse play once more as the big cantonment faded from view behind its fringe of pine woods.
Our first impression was that we would travel all the way to Georgia in the cars we had been assigned to, but, fortunately, this was not true, for after a long and tedious trip we detrained again at a ferry terminal in Brooklyn. Here, too, was confusion. It was late in the afternoon, and we were hungry. Every candy stand, and handy store was patronized until the officers interfered. Then came the big, old fashioned side-wheeled ferries, and we were hustled aboard.
Soon the old craft swung out into the riverand with churning paddles we headed down stream.
It was just sunset. Far down the bay, beyond Governor’s Island and Liberty, a great, fiery red disc was setting in a haze of smoke and mist from the city, while to our right and left on the river banks, lights began to twinkle, and overhead strings of diamonds draped each gracefully arching bridge. Past the Navy Yard we swung, with cheers from the crews of three destroyers in the river. Tugs and steamers and passing sound night boats greeted us with whistles, and we lined the rails and cheered back.
Soon we churned under the last of the bridges and began to make our tortoise-like way around the Battery. Lights were glimmering through the violet haze that shrouded the mass of sky-touching buildings, and in the foreground were hurrying throngs of men and women wending their way through Battery Park toward the ferries.
Up the North River, the skyline of the huge cities changed and grew more impressive, as one building after another came out of the mass and stood alone against the blue-blackEastern night sky. Ferries criss-crossing in the darkness, leaving sparkling trails of light that danced on the water, crowded close to us at times, and the mass of men and women huddled on the windswept decks, cheered us on our way. Thus did we say our last good-bye to the big city—and we said it solemnly and thoughtfully, too, for many of us know that we are going on the long, long journey and will never see that skyline again.
The crowds in the terminal, as we hurried from ferry to the railroad yard, cheered us, too, and men rushed out to shake hands with us and crowded cigarettes and cigars into our pockets as we marched on.
We had been told that the Red Cross would feed us. It did, to the extent of a single sandwich and a cup of coffee, hastily snatched as we wended our way through the railroad yard to the train.
Long tourist sleepers are our lot. They stood on a siding, dimly lighted with a single candle at either end of the car when we climbed into them and were assigned to our seats. We are settled now, and rolling swiftly across Jersey. Lights have been turned on, and theinterior of the car looks very strange with the big blue duffel bags swinging from every hook and swaying as the train rounds each curve. But we are all very quiet, and many of us are thinking. We are all homesick that is certain, and hungry, too, and wondering about the future.
We are rolling through Virginia into the sunset.
For twenty hours we have been crowded into these cars, and we are cramped and tired, but feeling happier with all. Two to a berth, we tried to sleep last night. But sleep was impossible. I was up most of the night, standing at the upper end of the car looking out the window, while my new-found bunkie tried hard to get in a few winks. He wasn’t successful.
At midnight we ran through a little station called Brandy, and there in a pounding rainstorm, under the light of a smoky, yellow oil lamp, stood a solitary soldierly-looking figure, a boy, bare-footed and with head uncovered and his rain-soaked cap held over his heart in asalute. He alone had been watching for the troop train.
Sometime after daylight, at Charlottesville, our train stopped for water. All signs of the rain had cleared, hundreds of boys, black and white, and men and women swarmed to the station to greet us. Our canteens were passed out of the windows for water, and hot coffee and thick sandwiches of home-made bread and jelly and delicious ham were given to us by a committee of very old women who had been up since long before daylight awaiting our arrival. Rations were served to us after we pulled out of the station, consisting of bread and hard crackers, and a can of tomatoes and a can of beans for every six men.
By way of diversion we began to play poker for the beans, and a pair of jacks left me breakfastless, except for the coffee and sandwich I was fortunate enough to get at Charlottesville. And that is all I have had since seven o’clock and it is now half-past four.
At one station along the line, where we laid over for a few moments, several fellows, acting as Sergeants, were sent out to buy food for our company. But the train pulled out withoutthem. Goodness knows where they are now, but the saddest part of it is that they didn’t bring back the eats.
We are travelling through a land of gold and red and green, with huge dabs of white marking the cotton fields. And we are hungry no longer.
At Cornellia the train stopped for half an hour, and the fellows, all but famished, made a wild rush for the door, and sweeping aside such obstructions as angry Sergeants took the town by storm. About seven hundred soldiers descended upon it, and bought everything in the eating line that they could possibly find, even to whole cheeses, huge stalks of bananas, and cases of honey. We ate, and we flooded the town with money. Never has Cornellia seen such a busy half-hour in its history, and never did the stores do such a tremendous business.
We held up the troop train while we satisfied our appetites. But what of it! We are happy now, with tight belts and plenty of cigarettes to smoke, so why worry!
Never in my life have I seen so many negroes.They swarm about the train at every stop we make, chalk their initials on the cars (as every one else has done) sing songs, cheer and just bubble over with enthusiasm. Last night, while our train was on a siding, an old fellow somehow got inside the car and did a wild buck and wing dance in the aisle for pennies that were tossed from every bunk. And this morning another old fellow, with a bag of cotton on his back, came a little too close to the windows of the troop train. Eager hands seized the bag and pulled it from his shoulders, and presently the cotton was being distributed among the men as souvenirs.
And now we are only twenty miles from Atlanta, and the fellows are beginning to pack up their belongings. Some are trying hard to shave in a crowded wash-room, for the long train ride has left us all appearing a little the worse for wear and we want to enter our new home as presentable as possible.
I wonder what this new home will be like? Camp X is the cantonment and I am told that it is bigger than the place we left, but if it is half as pleasant we will be satisfied.