Читать книгу Little Man - George Herbert Sallans - Страница 5

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George Battle said to the man who stood as a darker shadow than the night:

"Will you please tell me exactly where to see it? I wouldn't want to miss." He laughed nervously. "My first time to the guns, you know."

"You can't miss it, kid," said the man in the dark. "Red star shell, bursting into a green-and-yellow cluster. The second you see it, run like the devil in every direction at once, and bawl 'SOS STAND-TO!' at the top of your voice."

"That's all there is to do, then? I hope I'll see it!"

"I hope you don't; I want some sleep," said the man in the dark, and he was gone. The night parted to let him pass, and folded soundlessly behind him.

George stared after him unseeing. So it was like that! No pomp and clatter about the changing of this guard! He thought, with an exultant shiver: "Here am I, at the Front at last!"

The night breeze lapped at him like a draft from a grave, and he telescoped his head into his greatcoat collar till his steel helmet met it all around.

He stretched his eyes to the ghostly outline of the trench on either side of him. That trench connected the eighteen-pounder guns of his field battery. It oppressed him suddenly, and he climbed out on its parapet, and began to tiptoe back and forth between number three and four guns. He could see the sombre profile of their pits, those square rooms cut into the ground, walled with sandbags and steel rails, roofed with corrugated iron and sandbags to stop the shell splinters and the dreary, soggy insistence of the French winter.

He began to think with awe: "I, Gunner George Arthur Battle, the only one awake in this whole battery ..." And then he anxiously corrected himself, with a gesture of apprehensive apology toward the signal pit. No! Over there, to his left and behind the guns, they never slept. Eddie Chambers was on duty just now, phone strapped to his head, connected by a thin wire to the "O pip" a mile ahead, on that scrawny ridge he would see in another hour, when the first wink of dawn broke the misty blackness. Even now, at ragged intervals, a Very light streaked up, shone white, and swam leisurely to earth again, and the ridge stood gaunt and threadbare against the light.

He began again. "But," he reminded himself, "I have got to be first if anything happens, if the S O S goes up ... Red, bursting into a green-and-yellow cluster. That's it. Red, bursting into a green-and- ..."

He glued his eyes to the uneasy, invisible horizon. Would they shoot up just one, or would there be many? Well, no use worrying about it. But his heart and brain were on fire.

He groped back into the shallow trench, trying to land lightly on the duck-walk with his field boots and their steel-armored heels. Bits of chalk and mud slithered down after him. He stood still, then, straining his ears for human sounds. His heart thumped, but he stifled his breath in a flurry of alarm. Those fellows sleeping in their "hogaboons"—the surface dugouts of corrugated iron and sandbags—what would they say to a clumsy recruit? He braced himself for the tumult that might explode from some curtained entrance. Most of all he feared the rushing, blustering voice of Red Dall, bunking there in the double hogaboon with Bill Dunn. What a man, that Charley Dall, a man to give you gooseflesh!

George had found them in the gunpit the evening before when he first came to the guns in that January of nineteen-sixteen.

"Hey, guys," Red had bellowed, "look what they brought up with the rations!" His voice always came out like a foghorn; you didn't know whether it was a guffaw or a blast of anger.

Then Dunn, with a grin that began around his mouth corners and wrinkled up back of his eyes, clear to his ears, would talk as if words were a bore and too much effort. But to George he was just this side of God.

Bill Dunn was the limber gunner. That meant number one of the crew, the man who sighted the gun and fired it, with a vicious pull at the steel handle by his knee. He sat on a steel seat just left of the gun breech cradle. When the gun was fired, the barrel leaped back beside him on its recoil springs, and edged into place slowly. Number two gunner yanked open the breech, an empty shell case was ejected, and the loader thrust in another shell.

Third man in the pit was Bombardier Sam Johnson. "Streak," they called him, and George was shocked at their lack of respect for an N.C.O. They called him Streak, not only for his long, dangling legs and dizzy speed of movement, but for the zip and colour of his profanity. He had the most unprintable vocabulary George had ever heard; the impartial ferocity of his oaths was beyond one's wildest dreams.

"How the blank-blank long you been at the bloody horselines?" was Sam's first kindly greeting to George. "How many so-and-so illegitimate gunners they got down there swingin' the lead? I been at these cock-eyed guns so long my hair's growin' through my tin hat. Next time I get to an estaminet I'll ..."

"Aw go an' boil your head!" Red fired it at him with such violence that George winced. "You and your bawling about the horselines. What the hell d'ja come to this man's war for—to groom mokes or to snipe Heinies? You give me a pain in the ..."

"And you!" roared Streak, in soldier idiom, with another volley of his incredible profanity which he suddenly broke off with: "Say, who's talkin' to the kid anyway? How long you been over?" he turned to George.

"Just two weeks today," said George with a grateful stage fright. "Came from Shorncliffe over to Le Havre. Channel was so rough I slid ..."

"Yeh! You slid on the floor, and all the guys were sick but you." It was Red Dall's roaring voice, as he sat balanced on the gun trail. "Hey, Dunn, pull down the gas curtain. I feel a draft."

"We weren't a draft," George defended, angrily, and was instantly appalled at his own nerve. "They broke up our battery and divided us among you ..."

"Among us lousy so-and-so's," Dunn snorted. "Swell way to treat papa's gift to the Empah, dumping you in with such lugs as Red ..."

One of Dunn's boots ripped swiftly under the gun trail, anticipating Red's lunge. Red's feet flew in the air and he tumbled into George's embarrassed arms. George scrambled out, and Red rolled back among the stacked shell cases.

And thus, George's baptism to the guns. He had found the men neither hostile nor friendly, neither cold nor cordial, but with a loud and embarrassing bluster among themselves that he was to appreciate later. Their appalling oaths, their blood-curdling names and their terrifying familiarity were the brotherhood of the gun pit. Their hell-roaring antics were animal spirits. Their profane and lofty condescension to him alternately flattered and abashed him. Yet here he was, accepted among them even if only for a brief hour until they were bored with him.

George finally asked, with fearsome awe, where he should report. "What the hell!" shouted Red, "you in the firing-line and not even reported? Man, they shoot 'em for that up here!"

At last they relented, and told him that Duffie would be along and not to worry about reporting. Duffie came, sure enough and soon enough, bawled them out collectively and luridly for eating all the chocolate and biscuits, picked up Streak's legs and threw them sideways and sat on the ammunition-box where they had been. George called him Sergeant and hoped that some time he would have the nerve to call him Duffie.

Dufferin McLean was short, wiry, bronzed, a man who might be tough on parade ground. But here at the guns he was one of the gang, trading stories with them, relapsing at times into sudden stern dignity that impressed no one save George.

He was, felt George, a man you could never get very close to, a man you would hold always in awe. He would like him, he felt, if a rookie dared feel so personal toward a sergeant. And this mingled feeling of awe and friendship he was to carry until, long afterward, he dug Duffie's shattered body out of the filthy mud at Passchendaele, and marvelled at the sheer tenacity of a man who refused to die even when his brains lay in a shapeless mass beside him on the stretcher.

Tonight, though, his real alarm came when Duffie reminded them their crew had to do double sentry-go, and that George's turn was from four to six in the morning. "And remember an S O S isn't just some pretty fireworks to look at. Heinie's jumpy, if that means anything to you, and itching to come over."

"Yeah!" Red jeered, and he might have been doing it deliberately to ease George's embarrassment at the stern lecture. "An' when it goes up, you gallop into Duffie's cootie gallery and kick him square in the ..."

But he never finished, for Duffie sprang on him like a cat, wrapped the end of a breech-cloth around his face and was out of the low door before Red emerged, spluttering and swearing.

Ah, what an evening it had been! George had gone to sleep at last, in his blankets, with his rubber sheet spread under him, fairly tingling with excitement. Hard to imagine this was war.

But here he was alone, now, in dread that he'd wakened someone, lighting a cigarette and shielding the glow with his hand. Still little life on the horizon. "Too damned quiet," he had heard someone say the evening before. A few star shells over No Man's Land. That was all.

He tiptoed along the trench and listened at each gun pit. Snores and grunts from the little dugouts. Thank God! He sneaked away, climbed the parapet again. He wished the dawn would come, and yet dreaded it. "That's the time Heinie loves to come over," they had said.

"Wish I could be like Streak," he thought. A rounder, Streak called himself, and casually had mentioned adventures from Milwaukee to Denver, from Frisco to Detroit. Yet George suspected Streak was only a few years older than himself. In England and Scotland, too, it seemed that Streak had been to fabulous places, to haunts that George pretended he had seen, though his heart told him he had not the slightest idea of them.

It was nice, though, to think of Bo Charlton being in the battery with him—Bo, endeared by college days and by their travel overseas and their training with the old battery in England. Bo had come to France first. Yet, as George trudged into the horselines with their incredible mud, who should come roaring to meet him but his pal. Here was a thing, he had thought, that made strong men cry.

He started guiltily and suddenly from his reverie, as if he'd found someone looking over his shoulder. He glued his eyes to the front. Was he imagining it, or was it more fitful than it had been? Very lights rose and fell, and by their light he saw the naked stubs and ghosts of trees that had died long since. In a sardonic prayer they thrust their gaunt and tortured limbs skyward.

How would an S O S come? Would there be warning? Would guns start to shoot somewhere first? Suppose he wasn't looking just where the S O S went up!

He glanced around apprehensively in the agony of his rising excitement. The gun pits lay still, their roof edges dimly visible against the blacker ground, like unreal shadows.—Shadows! He peered again, then up and down the trench and off toward the east. Sure enough, it wasn't so dark now. The dawn was coming. "And Heinie just loves to ..."

Four faint, muffled booms, two seconds apart, away off in the distance beyond the lonely ridge ahead—noises hardly more than a far-off drum. A faint rustling, slithering noise now in the sky like some ironic god whispering beyond the clouds. A weird, unearthly sound that could not be placed, that grew a moment or two, then rustled again into silence.

He stared up into the starless blankness above him. His hair rose. What was that! And then he guessed, or thought he did:

"I've heard my first shell!" Long-range guns—Heinie guns—miles and miles away, shooting at some target miles behind him. "These Heinies can hit you if they just got your address," so ran the vaudeville joke. Where would these shells fall? St. Pol? Maybe farther. He listened intently for more. But there were none. Just those four measured beats, and the uncanny slithering in the emptiness of the sky.

How he would describe this in his first letter to Pitch Black! Or would it be to her? Would it be, maybe, to the girl in England, the girl Bo had introduced him to by mail? The girl he'd pretended he was going to see and never did! Josephine Yorke. "I'm called Joy," she had written. But he felt in self-defence: What did she care about him, she in England where she could meet thousands if she wanted to? And probably had. Still—kind of a pity not to know her when he had the chance. Might never get it again. "School chum of my sister," Bo had said.

A sudden chatter bit the silence beyond the ridge, and four Very lights went up in quick succession. A machine-gun! It rattled away for a few moments, stopped, then started again. More lights! More machine-guns joined in. Swift as thought, the clatter of them broke out to right and left.

George's heart pounded till his ribs shook. He looked hurriedly at his watch. Five-forty-five. Then he was staring again in consternation. What if the S O S had gone while he was finding the time! Some sentry! But no, an S O S hung in the air for some time ...

Sharp, distinctive cracks now, puncturing the rising, angry chatter of the machine-guns. Then an enormous cr-rump that sent a hollow backwash of sound racking through the morning. Machine-guns pelted away like mad. Lights rose in a shower.

White lights. Green lights. George Battle strained his eyes till they ached. What if he made a mistake! What if he had gone colour blind! How did infantrymen know when to shoot an S O S? Should he waken somebody anyway? Must be something wrong. "Don't be a fool, George! They know what they're doing. They're just ..."

His heart suddenly froze. Up it went, a red ball that shot high, hesitated an instant, burst into a dazzling cluster of breath-taking beauty. It was green! It was yellow, too! God in heaven, what a sight! He stood rooted in his tracks. He must run now, run like the devil in all directions and bawl S O S! His tongue stuck drily in his mouth!

"Hey, sentry! S O S! Stand-to! You asleep up there?" It was Chambers, at the mouth of the signal pit. He had got it by wire from the O Pip. Chambers rousing him—him, the sentry, on whom the battery depended! George's spell broke. With a sob he leaped into the trench, rushed to the nearest dugout entrance, Red's and Dunn's. His lips moved in soundless oaths at himself. He opened his mouth to yell.

"S O S!" he said, and his voice sounded matter of fact, apologetic, strained. He drew a deep breath and let it go again. This time it came out like a gunshot. In the darkness Red sprang up as if shot from a catapult, and bashed his head against the iron roof. As George fled to the next gun pit he heard a crimson blast from Red. But at last he had his voice, and each S O S shout gave him confidence.

Yells and orders rose all around him. Among them he heard Duffie's voice at the sergeants' pit. "S O S—Stand-to!" Everyone took it up. Everyone, in fact, seemed to waken with that roar on his lips. The whole battery came to life with a profane, explosive suddenness.

George came thrashing back along the trench toward C gun, and field boots pounded the duck-walk behind him. Gunners dived into the pits. In C, Red and Streak plunged in lightning haste to tear aside the camouflage screen from the mouth of the gun. Dunn was at the gun itself.

"Give us a hand here, kid," Red yelled. George gratefully rushed to the gun pit mouth, got tangled in the camouflage netting, stumbled around more in the way than of help.

Duffie was at the gun pit door now.

"Number three gun ready!" Dunn bawled.

Dunn sat in the firing-seat, Streak opposite him in number two seat, Red was at the ammunition shelves with a fuse wrench in his hands, a lamp facing him.

"Get some cotton in your ears, kid," he said.

"Range three-nine-hundred," Duffie yelled. Streak twirled the range wheel in a second, using a flashlight to see the figures.

"One-five degrees left!" Dunn traversed the gun to the angle with lightning speed, his eyes glued to the sights. The gun barrel halted its swing when the upright line in the sights cut through the lamp on the aiming post.

The noise up ahead was growing. Machine guns rat-tatted furiously all along the front. Heavy cr-rumps came more swiftly, as German guns and mortars laid down their barrage on front line and supports. The fat, heavy crumps were "Minnies," dropping from a high cruel arch over the boys ahead.

Duller booms and the staccato crackling of smaller explosions told of the infantry pumping their own mortar shells into the enemy. How fast they worked! The sky was a continual flare of lights now, and George flushed in shame at his fears of missing an S O S.

"High explosive!" yelled Duffie.

Red jammed a shell into the breech, Streak slammed the lock shut, Dunn yelled, "Ready!" Orders flew up and down the trench from the battery sergeant at the signal pit through his megaphone. The gun section sergeants picked them up and relayed them to the crews.

"Four rounds a minute! Sweep two degrees!" Duffie barked.

Bong! The flash of number one gun, and the ground shook. Then number two, closer. George held his breath. Duffie held his flashlight to his wrist watch.

"Number three gun, fire!" he yelled. And the shattering blast bit his words off in the air. A white sheet of flame leaped out ahead, the barrel flashed back as it vomited the fire and shell into the screaming dawn. The gun kicked and bounced, and the dust raised by the concussion flew up around them.

"Ready!" "Fire!" "Ready!" "Fire!" Every fifteen seconds Duffie barked, and the gun bit off his word. Each time the barrel leaped back as if it would tear loose; each time the gun bucked and reared and dug its trail shovel into the log, and the log held it so firmly that the gun wheels seemed to leave the ground. Dunn swept his two degrees right and left with the speed and precision of a machine. Streak whirled the range wheel at dazzling speed, though even a hair's difference meant yards in range.

The crisp, unexcited "Ready" fascinated George. Red roared as he sent each shell into the bore with a powerful thrust, addressed each shell to some Heinie, and blessed it with inexhaustible profanity that was hot and lurid as the red mop of hair that tumbled over his uncovered head.

Young gods they were, all! How sure of themselves! How contemptuous, how lordly superior as they joked and swore about the war and everyone in it including themselves! George was thankful to be with them. It would have been nice to have Bo in the same gun crew instead of in number one. But he felt privileged to be with these. Surely there were no finer gunners. Some day he, too, would show that he knew, that he was no ignoramus, even if he was a rookie. He would lay the gun. He would pull the firing handle. He ...

"Hey, move them damn shell cases, kid!" Red's terrifying thunder in his ears. "What the hell yuh think this is, a tea party? Come outa the trance!"

George sprang in fright. He ducked for empty brass cases on the floor, and as he did so Dunn fired again. The breech whizzed past his face and he stumbled and fell ingloriously backward. He scrambled frantically and comically out of the pile of rolling cases. Red's laughter rose in a high falsetto: "It's only your head, kid. You don't need it!"

Hot anger burned George's face, and he was glad of the dim light. He deserved the sarcasm. He bent over the shell cases and piled them furiously into the corner. His head rang, but not with injury. It was the demoniac crack each time as the field gun fired with such unbelievable, unbearable sharpness. It was, too, the stupid feeling that he had escaped a pulverized skull by an inch.

What a hellish din it was! Guns all about them. A battery to their left firing as if gone mad. Did their own sound like that! Big hollow booms from behind, where the howitzers lobbed their shells into the sky above.

George exulted: "What a battle! Wonder what's doing up ahead? Big push, I bet. What if we don't stop them ..." Twice Duffie had yelled to shorten range. They fired at 3,500 yards now. Four hundred yards all in a few minutes! Heinies coming over in mass formation—they did that. He'd heard about how they came. When would they reach the top of the ghostly, lonely ridge with its skeletons of trees? When ...

"SS-SS-SS ... Like a flying locomotive letting off steam right over his head. An indescribable blast of sound in the smallest fraction of a second, a shattering crash just behind them. Duffie ducked his head in the doorway, and George saw Red wince. Then came a thunderous rain of mud lumps on the gun pit roof.

"Holy old bald-headed!" said Streak. "Here's another—"

"Whoo-oo—ss-ss—bawm!" This time George heard it for a split second. An unearthly snore, like some cosmic lunatic tearing the sky apart. George ducked his head instinctively.

"Wh-what was that!"

"Five-nines, kid!" yelled Red, and shoved another shell in the bore. "Look out—" Again the snore and the smash of steam. This shell exploded ahead of the gun with a terrifying crash. Red had flopped half down; Dunn and Streak crouched behind the shrapnel shield on the gun. Duffie's voice again: "Fire!" And in defiance the living, smashing little gun spat again, as a terrier leaps at the throat of a wolfhound.

"Jumpin' Cripes! Has he got the range on us!" shouted Streak. "Give 'im hell, Bill! Holy—"

For a bewildered, shaken second George thought the gun had blown up on them. He saw the upward cascade of fire and earth just to the right of the gun pit mouth, found himself flattened as if by an earthquake, a ragged buzzing passed his ear. The aiming post was hidden a moment by the shower of falling earth and chalk, the gun pit roof rained dust on them, a stench filled his nose.

"Everybody all right?" Duffie's voice, and his flash lamp darted inquiringly around. "How's your sights, Bill?" Only then did George see a great jagged gash in the shrapnel shield. Red pointed with a wry, strained grin at the pit post beside him. There, sawn deep through the wood and imbedded in the sandbags, a jagged splinter of steel two inches thick and a foot long. Over Streak's head the tortured, twisted steel of the shield.

"Sights okay. Ready!"

"Fire!"

George's heart bounded in a great thump that stopped his breath. He was shaking like jelly. He was scared! Scared of what? More big shells came now, one after the other, right, left, front, back.

"God Almighty, has he got these beanblowers bracketed!" Red yelled. "Take that, you—" And he rammed a shell home so hard the bore rang with a hollow boom. Bang went the hot little gun again, and oil splashed back into their faces.

Suddenly Streak was lowering the barrel with the range wheel. Dunn was out of his seat in a flash, grabbed the long ramrod with the cloth around its end, stumbled over George who was in the way, yelled "Lookout!" He thrust the ramrod into the barrel, the three gunners worked with all their might, pulling and pushing it to and fro furiously till the rifling shone again.

Then out came the ramrod, was flung to one side. Up went the barrel, gun was traversed, Dunn at the sights, shell in the bore, breech slammed shut. "Ready!" "Fire!" It had all taken but a few seconds.

"C'mon, kid, spell off." Red brushed past George, half shoved him into the loader's place. And here he was at last, no formality, no orders, no instructions, save "Here, kid, load!" A gunner at last. He would show them now!

The barrel flashed back past him, eased into place again, open came the breech, out the empty shell case. Blindly George stabbed at the open breech bore with the sharp-nosed shell, crashed it against the breech block, tried again, got it half-way in, yanked it back. It was stuck! Sweat burst from his body, panic seized him. Shame blinded and shattered him. He tore a gash in his hand.

"Here!" With one dexterous wrench Red had the shell loose. "Let 'er go again!"

Tears flooded his eyes. Tears of anger and shame and humiliation. What a stupid ass they'd think him! Why didn't shells go in for him as they had at the artillery camp?

"Range thirty-six hundred. Two rounds a minute," Duffie's voice. Blessed sound! George's head cleared as the fire slackened. But the terror of the five-nines came more vividly. His heart tore at his ribs. In the dawn light over the jagged edge of the shield, he saw the gaping hole at the gun pit corner, where the shell had torn away the sandbags and left the roof rails naked and gaunt. Beyond that were other fresh shell holes. He shuddered. But an inner glow had begun to burn, and it persisted and grew. They were still letting him load!

"Cripes!" Streak's yell was swallowed in the snoring howl from the skies, in the thunder of the explosion, in the sharper blast near by. Duffie's head ducked again. And in a moment:

"Number two gun out of action. Number three gun, four rounds a minute, sweep three degrees!"

A harsh rain of oaths from Streak. "What the hell, ain't they got any other guns on this front!" He sprang toward the gun trail. George, fussing with a shell that would not go home, felt himself suddenly and violently propelled backward.

"One side! Lemme at it!" His gloved hands seized the shell, rammed it in with a resounding bong. Streak's words tumbled out in a hail of profanity.

"See you got that bubble some place near centre and the range within a hundred yards, yah redheaded sheepstealer. Let 'er go—" The gun fired as he spoke.

Absorbed in admiration, George piled shell cases furiously, and stacked new shells for Streak. He would, he knew, never forget this.

They dropped back to thirty-eight hundred, then to their original range, reduced fire to one a minute, and presently came: "Cease fire!" The strafe was over. The five-nine battery had stopped shooting, as if disgusted with trying to hit so insignificant a target.

"Them Fritzies might let a guy have a night's sleep before they start their monkey business," Streak grumbled.

"Gee, what happened, d'you suppose?" George breathed, trying to be neither too eager nor too indifferent.

"Just a raid," Dunn grunted. "They didn't get anything, or we'd be counter-attacking."

"Say, go tie up your hand, kid, or you'll have a case of galloping scabies," Red advised. George shrugged in bravado. "Oh, 'snothing," he estimated. "Guess I'll—"

"Go tie it up, you damned fool!" Red roared in sudden bluster, and George winced, not knowing whether the glint in his eye was deviltry or fury. But after a quick, alarmed look he bolted for his dugout. He pulled a first-aid bandage out of his haversack, doused iodine on the raw wound, wrapped it and was on his way back in a moment. He collided with Duffie at the gun pit door.

"Okay, stand down, you mugs," Duffie said. "Cover your gun pits—and make it fast!" They were all out the entrance in a flash, Dunn for the gun muzzle, which he covered with a canvas hood, and Streak and Red for the camouflage netting. George helped them as best he could, and stared down the hole the big shell had made so close to their gun. It was broad daylight now, and the faint song of an airplane came to his ears.

"Hey, come in, dope," someone yelled from the gun pit, and George sneaked in under the corner of the camouflage.

"Don'tcha see that plane up there!" Streak grumbled.

"Aw, dry up," Red reproved him without rancour. "What's gripin' you!"

Streak ignored him with lofty disdain, and asked Duffie: "How did B sub make out?"

"Langford got it," Duffie said shortly, and they knew how it hurt him to say it. Langford was the sergeant of number two, and Duffie's closest friend in the battery. "Smith's blown up—Blighty for him. Harrison got a plunk in the neck. Shell landed in the pit mouth. The gun went right through the roof."

A voice from the sergeants' pit: "Rum up!" The three bombardiers each grabbed a fuse cap from a shelf.

"C'mon, kid, and bring a dish, before these pot-bellied sergeants gaffle it all," Red shouted. But the taunt was lost on Duffie, who was already on the way. George followed them in the trench to where the quartermaster's assistant, Poky Jenkins, poured the rum from a stone jar labelled S.R.D. Red held out two fuse caps.

"I'll draw Langford's as well," he said, as one cap was being filled, and Jenkins poured before he looked up. Then light dawned on him. "Hey! you low-down—" But Red fled down the trench, shouting with laughter.

Jenkins muttered profanely under his breath and went on pouring. George got his and followed Red and Dunn and Streak to the gun pit. The others poured theirs into their mess tins and diluted it with water from their brown water bottles. George decided that, for effect, he should drink his neat. He tipped the fuse cap to his lips. Liquid fire rolled down his windpipe. He gasped, spluttered, and held desperately to what was left in the fuse cap, as he reeled about, coughing. They laughed at him in a gleeful lack of sympathy.

"G-God, that's strong," he finally moaned. Tears rained down his cheeks. He humbly poured the rest into his mess tin, diluted it and drained it, while Dunn and Streak called Red names for drawing the double ration. Drawing for a dead man had seemed cynical to George, but he was too loyal to feel shocked. If Red did it, it was all right.

He listened to their talk, laughed at their jokes even when the point escaped him, and asked questions. What had happened? Had Heinie taken any ground? Would many be killed?

They shrugged at his questions. Then Duffie happened along. "Come on, loosen up," Red bawled at him. "What was it—Fritz spot a new latrine or something?"

"Guess they wanted prisoners, but they didn't get any. Our boys left a few of them on the wire."

George thought of the lonely, naked ridge ahead and wondered what good it could do to send men out like that to hang in pieces on the fields of barbed wire. And he struggled with a thought. "I—guess I've a brother up there somewhere, wonder if he was in the front line this morning?"

"Just a minute, I'll phone up the general and find out," Red began, and stopped. "Humph!" he grunted with sympathy. "That's a hell of a place to send your brother. What possessed him to go in the P.B.I.? Doesn't he know anything?"

"He was one of the first to enlist," George said stoutly.

"Well, he shoulda joined the beanblowers," said Red.

There was a bluff heartlessness about it that George realized was only a pose. But he had a sharp fear in his heart. What if good old Hal did stop one? "I'd be the only one left of us except Jean, and she's married."

The gunners drifted off to their dugouts, to lie on their blankets fully dressed, drowsy with the rum and breakfast. George still sat on the gun pit steps, in a delirium of misery, anxiety and happiness.

His thoughts, too, went to an estaminet, to the Coq d'Or a mile from the horselines, where he'd found the luscious and seductive Andree. Baffling and preposterous creature she was, with those beckoning eyes of hers, those legs that kept their shape in spite of the wooden shoes. You had to admit it, he argued passionately to himself, these French women had something. A yard or two of black dress, a wisp of white for trimming—He thought of Andree with yearning.

He'd gone from the horselines with some spare gunners and drivers, and the saddler and bugler, to drink vin blanc, and Andree after her fashion had winked at him.

Then something had happened. George was rocking back in his chair, making harmony with the others at the table, when the door opened. A lean-faced young man came in, forage cap tilted rakishly across his handsome head, and friends with him. George's glass had gone down on the table with a crash, and he was on his feet and racing across the room.

"Hal!"

"George! Where'd you come from?"

Thus, two brothers in France. Two brothers with hardly a dozen words before they'd dragged their chairs around a common table, and Andree came with beaucoup vin blanc from the inexhaustible cellar of the estaminet. In the courage that Hal's presence had brought him, George had put his arm around Andree as she poured the wine, just in fun, and had found her frighteningly warm and yielding. To cover his blushes at this sudden discovery, he had exaggerated:

"My new gal, Hal!"

It was only a boast, but having said it he felt an obligation to make it real. He'd tried his French with her and, to his delight, she understood him. He had asked her, in his pain-staking way, if he might come to see her. And then there was a sudden occasion when it was not arranged but simply happened, with all the hot-blooded impulse of their age, his own shyness and the sophistication of Andree's calling.

The other soldiers made rude remarks, and Andree, estaminet born and trained, met them with a snappy retort. But George liked to think that sometimes the quick flashes from the corners of her eyes had a special meaning for him. And what a laugh she had! A rich, throaty laugh with music in it.

Some day, he thought, wouldn't it be something if he and Andree were to be married. When he got leave he would come to this little village and walk along the red flagstones and trade the time of day across the courtyard, with its eternal manure pile, with M. Papa in his barn. He would taunt Mama as she muttered over the soup and the brown bread and the red wine. And then he and Andree, they would be out in M. Papa's orchard under his apple trees and—

George stirred in his reverie. Andree? Andree or Joy? Joy, an exquisite creature of his dreams whom he hadn't yet dared visit. Well, on leave he would go and see her, but maybe he could go and see Andree first, and then to each of them he could feel like a man with a romance. Andree—Joy. Well, Andree was closer. He would go again when he was given his first relief from the guns.

Yet he and Hal had been there, Hal of the P.B.I., Hal the lean and rugged-faced veteran who'd been a boy when he left for the war. Hal, who'd gone singing down the long road with his friends. How casual it was, two brothers here in France at the Coq d'Or. Scant words together, and then to the business at hand.

"See you here again," they said. "Tomorrow night," George made Hal promise. And George had gone back, but Hal was not there, for Hal's battalion had gone into the line. Hal was up there somewhere in front while this strafe was on. Well, they would meet again. He refused to think that the line troops might go somewhere else when they came out. He patted the card case in his pocket. A little picture of Andree lay there. Perhaps he alone of all the soldiers had a picture of Andree. He had a queer, quick thought of Pitch Black, far in Canada. And then the heavy weight of the morning bore on him and he dozed on the gun pit steps.