Читать книгу The Khaki Boys at Camp Sterling; Or, Training for the Big Fight in France - Bates Gordon - Страница 5

During the first three days in camp the four Khaki Boys could not get over the awkward feeling of having been suddenly set down in the midst of a strange and confused world. Taken out for drill on the second morning after their arrival at Camp Sterling, their first encounter with a drill sergeant did not tend to make them feel strictly at home in the Army. It served, instead, to bring out sharply to them a deep conviction of their own imperfections.

Greatly to their secret disappointment, they were not all assigned to the same squad. Bob and Roger were placed in one squad, Ignace and Jimmy in another. Of the four, Jimmy Blaise acquitted himself with the most credit. Blessed with a naturally fine carriage, lithe of movement and quick of perception, he showed every promise of becoming a success as a soldier. Undoubtedly his previous, though amateur training, now stood him in good stead. Added to that was a genuine enthusiasm for things military.

Schooled in the work-a-day world, Roger and Bob were also of excellent material. Both had learned to move quickly and obey promptly. Roger’s chief assets were earnestness of purpose and absolute dependability. Less earnest and more inclined to whimsicality, Bob was possessed of an alertness of brain that enabled him to comprehend instantly whatever was required of him. So the two were fairly well-matched and needed practice only in order to develop and bring out their latent soldierly qualities.

Poor Ignace alone seemed determined to cover himself with confusion. Drilled in the same squad with Jimmy, he was from the start a severe trial to the efficient, but hot-headed young sergeant in charge. Slow to think and slower to act, he immediately became a mark for criticism. His awkward carriage and shuffling walk were an eye-sore to that trim, capable officer.

During the first day’s drilling of the squad to which Ignace belonged, the sergeant showed becoming patience with the clumsy Pole’s painful efforts to obey orders. Two trying sessions with Ignace on the next day sent his scanty stock of forbearance to the winds. At the morning drill the sergeant had, with difficulty, mastered his growing irritation. Ordered out for drill again that afternoon, Ignace received the rebuke that had been hovering behind the sergeant’s lips since first he had set eyes on the unfortunate Pole.

“See here, you,” rapped out the disgusted “non-com,” after a particularly aggravated display of awkwardness had aroused his pent-up ire. “Where do you think you are, anyway? This is no boiler-factory. You’re in the Army now! Lift up your feet! You’re not stubbing along to work. Pick up your head! First thing you know you’ll be stepping on your neck. That’s a little more like it. Now hold it for two minutes, if you can. If you can’t – into the awkward squad you go to-morrow. Pay attention and do as you’re told when you’re told. Every time you make a move you make it just in time to queer your squad. Now this is the last time I’m going to tell you. I’ve got something better to do than splitting my throat yelling at you.”

This scathing bawling-out of unlucky Ignace occurring just before the drill ended, he escaped, for that day at least, the humiliation of being bundled into the dreaded awkward squad. But to-morrow was yet to be reckoned with. In consequence, he looked a shade more melancholy than usual when, the drill period over, he dejectedly moped along toward the barracks with Jimmy.

A short distance from it, they encountered Bob and Roger, who were also returning from a period of, to them, strenuous drill. As recruits, it would be some little time before they would be ready to adhere to the regular daily program of infantry drill.

“Hello, fellows!” greeted Bob. “Hike along with us and let’s hear the latest. How goes drill?”

“Oh, pretty fair.” Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. Ignace, however, shuffled along beside Jimmy in gloomy silence.

“Cheer up, Iggy.” Guessing the reason for the Pole’s dejection, Bob gave him a friendly slap between his again sagging shoulders. “For goodness’ sake, brace up! When you hump over like that your coat fits you, not. You’d better shove a stick under your arms and across your shoulders, and spend your time until Retreat hiking around camp that way. It’ll be as good as shoulder braces.”

“So will I.” A gleam of purpose, which Bob failed to note, shot into the Pole’s china-blue eyes, as, with a deep sigh, he threw back his shoulders.

“You’d better stop shuffling your feet, too.” Now on the subject, Bob decided to call his disconsolate “Brother’s” attention to this unsoldierlike habit. “Pick ’em up like this.” Bob took a few extravagantly high steps in a purely waggish spirit.

“So will I,” came the resolute repetition. “Soon learn I. It is the yet hard. An’ the words; the words never I un’erstan’.” Ignace’s voice held a note of active distress. It called for sympathy.

“What words?” asked Roger. “Oh, I know. Do you mean that you don’t understand the commands the sergeant gives you?”

“Som’time, yes; som’time, no. When yes, I do, but too late.”

“I understand.” Roger nodded sympathetically. “You ought to take my manual and study it. You can learn all the different commands from it. Then you’ll know them when you hear them and can follow them more easily.”

“Never un’erstan’ I that book. I have read him, but he is no for me,” came the dispirited objection.

“Ha! I’ve an idea.” Bob began to laugh. “I’ll fix you up, Iggy. You come around to me after mess to-night, and I’ll have a grand surprise for you. Don’t you bother me till then, either, or you won’t get it. Savvy?”

“Y-e-a.” Ignace looked drearily hopeful.

“Now what have you got up your sleeve?” asked Jimmy curiously. Bob was chuckling as though over something extremely funny.

“Wait and see. What I said to Iggy means you fellows, too. Run along and take a walk around Camp Sterling. Sight-seers are always welcome, you know. Here’s where I fade away and disappear.” With a wave of his hand, Bob started on a run for Company E’s barrack, to which they had now come almost opposite.

“Let’s do as he says. We’ll take a walk around, and see if we can’t find a few officers to try a salute on. I’ve got to practice that. I almost bumped into one yesterday. He looked so prim and starchy I pretty nearly forgot to salute him.” Jimmy looked briefly rueful.

“All right. I guess I need a little saluting practice, too,” agreed Roger.

“I can no go. I have the work to do,” demurred Ignace. “Goo-bye. You again see som’time.” Without further explanation, the Pole turned and scuttled off down the company street in the direction from which they had come.

The two he had so unceremoniously deserted stopped to watch him. Somewhat to their surprise they saw him suddenly leave the street and set off across a stretch of open ground sloping a little above the camp.

“What’s he up to now, I wonder?” mused Jimmy.

“Hard to tell. Those Poles are queer. He’s a splendid fellow, though, not a bit of a coward. Too bad he has so much trouble about the drill, isn’t it?” Roger felt extreme sympathy toward blundering Ignace.

“Yes. He got his from the drill sergeant this afternoon. I was afraid he would. Say, do you know it’s funny about him. He’s the last fellow I’d have ever thought of getting chummy with. At home, I couldn’t have stood him for a minute. Yet here, somehow, I kind of like him. He’s so sure that we’re his brothers and all that, I feel as if I ought to be good to him.”

Bob smiled. He quite understood Jimmy’s attitude. Born of the classes, fortunate Jimmy had never had much occasion to consider the masses, particularly the very humblest of the great army of bread-winners.

“That’s one thing I like about the Army,” he said. “It’s the Service that counts; not just you or I. A private’s just a private here, even if he is a millionaire’s son back in civil life. By the time this war is over, a lot of fellows will have found that out, the same as you have. It’s different with me. Iggy seems sort of my brother, after all, because I’ve been a worker, too. He’s a good, honest fellow and I like him. That’s enough for me.”

“He’s square,” emphasized Jimmy. “When a fellow’s square, he’s pretty nearly O. K. Iggy’s clean and neat, too. That’s more than I can say of some of those rookies in our barrack. Say, did you know that the guy who bunks next to that fresh Bixton is a German-American? Schnitzel’s his name. Wonder how he happened to enlist. He’s a queer stick. Never says a word. Just watches the fellows as if they were a bunch of wild Indians. Do you know what that Bixton has been handing around the barrack?” Jimmy scowled as he mentioned the man whom he so strongly detested.

“No.” A faint pucker appeared between Roger’s own brows. He had not forgotten Bixton’s unnecessary jeering at Ignace. He also disapproved of the freckle-faced rookie as having too much to say.

“Well,” continued Jimmy, “I heard he said that this man Schnitzel acted more like a German spy, sent here by the Fritzies, than a Sammy. Can you beat that?” Jimmy’s question fully conveyed his disgust.

Roger’s lips tightened. “Bixton ought to have more sense,” was his curt reply. “That’s a pretty serious story to start about an American soldier. Are you sure he said it? Did you get it straight?”

“Yep. I told the fellow that told me to can it. Catch me getting into a mix-up over a yarn like that. I guess you know how much love I have for Bixton. Bob’s down on him. Even Iggy says, ‘Too much speak for nothin’.’”

Both boys laughed at the Pole’s blunt criticism.

“I don’t like him, either,” returned Roger decidedly. “We’d better all steer clear of him. Too bad he’s in your squad. He’ll probably try to make fun of poor old Iggy.”

“Just let him start something. Great Scott!” Jimmy’s hand went up like lightning. His quest of an officer to salute had been granted with a despatch that almost proved fatal to him. “Pretty near missed it again,” he muttered, as soon as the passing officer, a second lieutenant, was out of earshot.

“I saw him about a fourth of a second before you,” laughed Roger. “I didn’t have time to warn you. That’s what we get for gossiping. We must keep our eyes open and our hands ready from now on.”

Determined not to be caught napping again, the two bunkies strolled along, eyes alertly trained on all passers-by. Following the company street for almost a mile they retraced their steps, talking confidentially as they went. A brief stop at the barrack saw them issue from it with sparkling eyes. The home folks had stolen a march on them in the matter of letters. Jimmy was the proud recipient of three, while Roger had been made happy with a kindly note from Mrs. Blaise.

“Let’s go up there to those woods and sit on that stump fence to read ’em,” proposed Jimmy. “No use going back to barracks. Old Bob will have a fit if we butt in on his great stunt, whatever that is.”

Roger acquiescing, the two left the street, unconsciously taking almost the same route which Ignace had traveled. It was not more than a quarter of a mile to the irregular stump fence that skirted the bit of woodland.

“Gee, it looks great up among those trees. Come on.” Clearing the fence at a bound, Jimmy forgot his newly-acquired dignity and raced along through the woods with the joyous friskiness of a small boy, Roger close behind him.

A little way back among the trees they came to a good-sized flat rock and on this the two sat down to read the news from home. Roger read Mrs. Blaise’s note in happy silence. Jimmy, however, broke into speech about every five seconds. “Just listen to this!” or “What do you know about that?” was his continual cry, followed by the reading of a line or a paragraph. One letter alone he declined to share with Roger. “This is from my girl,” was his sheepish apology. “She used to live next door to us, but now she lives in Buffalo. This letter came to our house after I’d gone, so Mother sent it on to me. ’Course, Margaret, that’s her name, couldn’t come down to the train to see me off; so she wrote, thinking I’d get it that day. We’re just good friends, you know. None of the love stuff. She’s a fine little girl, though, and pretty as a picture.”

“I am sure she must be.” Roger’s eyes twinkled. Jimmy’s candid confession amused him not a little. Silent while Jimmy read the letter, he became aware of a far-off crackle of brush. “Someone’s coming,” he announced.

“Huh? Uh-huh,” returned Jimmy, still deep in his letter.

But no one appeared in sight, although the faint snapping of twigs under human feet was still to be heard.

“Someone is walking around on the other side of that little hill,” Roger asserted, proud of his ability to locate the sound. For this is a most necessary requisite of a soldier.

“Let ’em walk.” Jimmy declined to be interested.

“Just for curiosity, I’m going to see who it is.” Roger rose and strolled quietly toward the crest of the hill. Three minutes later he was back, his usually serious face all smiles. “Come here,” he called in an undertone. “Want to see something funny? Go cat-footed, though. Let him hear you and the show will be over!”