Free Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos Page B

somebody.
    “That’s at the front, ain’t it?”
    At that moment the lieutenant strode by. A long khaki muffler was thrown carelessly round his neck and hung down his back.
    “Look here, men,” he said severely, “the orders are to stay in the cars.”
    The men slunk back into the cars sullenly.
    A hospital train passed, clanking slowly over the crosstracks. Fuselli looked fixedly at the dark enigmatic windows, at the red crosses, at the orderlies in white who leaned out of the doors, waving their hands. Somebody noticed that there were scars on the new green paint of the last car.
    “The Huns have been shooting at it.”
    “D’ye hear that? The Huns tried to shoot up that hospital train.”
    Fuselli remembered the pamphlet “German Atrocities” he had read one night in the Y.M.C.A. His mind became suddenly filled with pictures of children with their arms cut off, of babies spitted on bayonets, of women strapped on tables and violated by soldier after soldier. He thought of Mabe. He wished he were in a combatant service; he wanted to fight, fight. He pictured himself shooting dozens of men in green uniforms, and he thought of Mabe reading about it in the papers. He’d have to try to get into a combatant service. No, he couldn’t stay in the medics.
    The train had started again. Misty russet fields slipped by and dark clumps of trees that gyrated slowly waving branches of yellow and brown leaves and patches of black lace-work against the reddish-grey sky. Fuselli was thinking of the good chance he had of getting to be corporal.
     
    At night. A dim-lighted station platform. The company waited in two lines, each man sitting on his pack. On the opposite platform crowds of little men in blue with mustaches and long, soiled overcoats that reached almost to their feet were shouting and singing. Fuselli watched them with a faint disgust.
    “Gee, they got funny lookin’ helmets, ain’t they?”
    “They’re the best fighters in the world,” said Eisenstein, “not that that’s sayin’ much about a man.”
    “Say, that’s an M.P.,” said Bill Grey, catching Fuselli’s arm. “Let’s go ask him how near the front we are. I thought I heard guns a minute ago.”
    “Did you? I guess we’re in for it now,” said Fuselli.
    “Say, buddy, how near the front are we?” they spoke together excitedly.
    “The front?” said the M.P., who was a red-faced Irishman with a crushed nose. “You’re ’way back in the middle of France.” The M.P. spat disgustedly. “You fellers ain’t never goin’ to the front, don’t you worry.”
    “Hell!” said Fuselli.
    “I’ll be goddamned if I don’t get there somehow,” said Bill Grey, squaring his jaw.
    A fine rain was falling on the unprotected platform. On the other side the little men in blue were singing a song Fuselli could not understand, drinking out of their ungainly-looking canteens.
    Fuselli announced the news to the company. Everybody clustered round him cursing. But the faint sense of importance it gave him did not compensate for the feeling he had of being lost in the machine, of being as helpless as a sheep in a flock.
    Hours passed. They stamped about the platform in the fine rain or sat in a row on their packs, waiting for orders. A grey belt appeared behind the trees. The platform began to take on a silvery gleam. They sat in a row on their packs, waiting.

II
    The company stood at attention lined up outside of their barracks, a long wooden shack covered with tar paper. In front of them was a row of dishevelled plane trees with white trunks that looked like ivory in the faint ruddy sunlight. Then there was a rutted road on which stood a long line of French motor trucks with hunched grey backs like elephants. Beyond these were more plane trees and another row of barracks covered with tar paper, outside of which other companies were lined up standing at attention.
    A bugle was sounding far away.
    The lieutenant stood at attention very stiffly. Fuselli’s