At Plattsburg Part 2

d.i.c.k.

Postscript, written Sat.u.r.day morning at 5.30, waiting for breakfast.

We have in our squad one Randall, a person of recent Yale extraction--though (having good Yale friends) I don't lay it up against the college. Yesterday he established his bed in the corporal's place, which so far the rest of us had modestly avoided; and he fell foul of young David ten minutes after he had come among us. The two are evidently the youngest of us, with "college" sticking out all over them, and so might naturally draw together. But there is a still more natural antagonism between them, of the thoroughbred for the mongrel. For young Farnham, in spite of his effeminacy, has the instincts of his ancestors; and Randall, in spite of a magnificent physique, carries round with him something that says to David, "Don't trust him!" What makes personality?

I declare I cannot put my finger on the thing that makes me sure that Randall is yellow; but David has seen it, and has drawn back from it.

Ninety-nine Yale men may slang Harvard, and the Harvard man will take it in good part--and _vice-versa_; but Randall is the hundredth, and he said a few things that made David tremble, not with anger but with disgust.

"Have a cigarette?" asked Randall at the end. "No, thanks," answered David.--"Oh, he doesn't smoke!" cried the other. "I do," said David, and lit his own cigarette. I'm sorry for it. Probably Randall can make David pay for this declaration of war. Yet I'm glad too. And you should have seen Knudsen's eye flash, and then soften as he looked at the young fellow.

War has been continuing these last few minutes. In the most ridiculous way David, after his shower bath, messed round with a shaving brush and a piece of soap, trying to get a lather on his face. Randall saw it first, and with roars of laughter called our attention to him. Corder, who instantly understood, quietly twinkled; but Knudsen wrinkled his brow at the boy. "Have you never done that before?" he demanded. Said innocent David, "I forgot to get my man to show me." "Your _man_?" asked Knudsen.

"His valet!" screamed Randall, overcome with the humor of the situation.

Knudsen, never having been acquainted with the Harvard Gold Coast, showed in his keenly intelligent face first amazement, then disgust, then to my pleasure a kind of pity. In a moment he had both brush and soap in his hands, and soon plentifully lathered David. The boy then took his razor, one of the old style, and immediately gashed himself.

With indulgent impatience Knudsen took the razor, sat the boy down, and muttering to himself that he'd never tried this job before, skilfully shaved one half of David's face, at each moment explaining the use of the weapon. "Why didn't you get a safety razor?" he demanded. The lad answered, "My cousin Walter uses this kind." I remember that he used to idolize Walt, as all the younger fellows did; if he still has some of the feeling there's hope for him. Knudsen made him shave the other half of his face himself--a botched job, but still David finished it. Randall remarked that safety razors were best for girls, and when David finally emerged fresh, pink, and handsome in spite of his wounds, Randall said, "Now you're yourself again, Miss Lucy."

The boy's face is very sensitive; I saw that he was more hurt than angry, and he flushed deeply with the pain of it. It was Knudsen who was angry, but he said nothing. Corder still watched quizzically. I know that the t.i.tle will stick. It is not ten minutes since the word was uttered, and we are already taking it up as David's name. Randall uses it flagrantly, the rest of us as a matter of course, all except Knudsen. "Come on, Lucy," he said just now when the first call for a.s.sembly sounded, and with his hand on David's shoulder he went with him into the street, protectively, I think.

I shall close this and send it off. Again love from

d.i.c.k.

PRIVATE RICHARD G.o.dWIN TO HIS MOTHER

Sat.u.r.day, Sep. 9, 1916.

At the Y. M. C. A. Nearing 9 P. M.

DEAR MOTHER:--

My tremendous postscript of this morning has somewhat led me out of the order of the day. I found myself awake at reveille, and rolled willingly out of bed. At the spigot, the one and only article of convenience at the lower end of the company street, I found a helpful comrade who gladly soused me from a bucket, and the day was begun. Back in the tent I found the fellows slowly coming to consciousness, all except that accurate and careful elder, Corder, who was dressing with great preciseness after a shower bath, and was calmly pleased at having no particular symptoms of old age to report. He and I have a valuable distinction as the only men in the squad with foresight enough to have been _typhinated_, worth while on this day when the others must submit to inoculation, if they want to run no risk on the hike. Then David's shaving, as described. It was cold when we finally turned out, and our humane lieutenant, placing himself on a table at the head of the street, while we in open formation faced him, put us through setting-up exercises that warmed us sufficiently to brave the chilly mess-shacks for our breakfast.

It was there that David found me out. He first got my given name, Richard. Then he made me acknowledge that I was in Harvard, 1910. At the next pause he said, "My cousin Walter Farnham was in that cla.s.s." "Yes,"

said I, and talked to the man on my other side. That stumped David, that anyone should know his cousin Walt and not be eager to talk about him. He did not approach the subject again till he and Knudsen and I and Corder were together in the tent. Then he put it right up to me. "Weren't you my cousin's best man?" "I was," said I, and Sick Call having just blown, I went out, saying that I wanted to see who answered it. I know Knudsen and Corder looked at me hard; as for David, he cried out, "Oh, I beg your pardon!" I have reasoned out that with his delicate social perceptions and the stock of gossip that his mother supplies him with, he must have concluded that I was not in the mood to talk of weddings; but the real fact is that I don't intend to be enlisted as his nurse. As for the other side of it, I know I can depend on him not to tell the others about Vera and me.

When I came back, it being about time for drill, I found him explaining that while of course he'd not had his "man" at college, he always used a barber there. The man, I'm sure, was with him at all other times. Then when we fell in I heard a fellow from another squad call David Lucy. That was Randall's doing. Presently it will be all up and down the street. But Randall will be the only one to have any feeling about it. With the others now it is a matter of course, even with David himself.

Our morning's work began on the drill-field, with its open drainage trenches yawning for our feet and its scattered mounds to stumble on. Gay work, this learning to walk in the right place, stand in the right way, toss your nine pound rifle about as if it were a straw, and all with but a moment or two for thought between the first order and the second. Even Pickle was silent this morning, intent like the rest of us on his job. We are all so green that, except for the occasional old-timer, no one was giving his neighbor any advice.

Then on a sudden we were tested. "All who have had any previous experience" were required to step one pace to the front. There were not many of them. Then "all who wish to be corporal," or words to that effect. With about half the company I took the forward pace. The lieutenant separated these goats from the humbler sheep, sent us under a sergeant to another part of the field, and himself took charge of the remainder. The sergeant divided us up into twos and set us by turns to drilling each other, evidently to test our knowledge and our ability to give commands.

Pickle was my victim, or I was his. We eyed each other doubtfully. "You begin," said I. "No, you," retorted he. "Gee, what a gink I was to think I wanted to be corporal!" So I tackled the job; and of course, not being used to it, I made long pauses between the commands, gave them wrong, could not a.s.sume a proper military accent. It's not so easy. I have heard, in the armory at Boston, a militia captain (_captain_, mind you!) give the command "Attention!" in three different ways, continually experimenting. So how could I, for the first time in my life, rap out my orders like a veteran? What we had to do was absurdly simple; but poor Pickle, when I balked, succeeded no better than I, so finally we fell to consulting each other about it and became idle, like other groups that we saw. Then came our way another pair, who being as experienced as we are green, speedily took us in charge and manhandled us almost as skilfully as the lieutenant. I presently saw our West Pointer observing the drilling groups, and with him another with two bars on his collar, the same erectness, and the same natural air of knowing his business. The two were like farmers judging cattle, disposing of each one with swiftness, taking rapid notes, and then herding us together into our original ranks for a final shaking down. The captain disappeared, but I hoped he was to be ours, for though I had had but sidewise glimpses of him, there seemed a fine frank openness about him that I liked.

Sure enough, in the afternoon he appeared in this wise. The company was a.s.sembled and marched out onto the highway, where we stood in double rank with our hats off, for a final sizing up. I heard a new voice, deep and powerful, at the further end of the line; then along he came with the lieutenant, rapidly sizing us up, counting us off, thrusting in a new man here and there, the new men to be our corporals. Randall disappeared into another squad, and we have now as corporal one of those two who drilled Pickle and me this morning. There are these others of us: Pickle, Corder, Knudsen, Lucy, Clay, a handsome young Southern medical student, and Reardon, a grocer's clerk from a little town in Connecticut. Our corporal is Bannister, manager of the routing department, whatever that may be, of a tool-making establishment near Detroit. For a mixed crowd, of ages from grizzled Corder down to the very new graduate, what could be better? The captain, having put us all in place, called us to attention without any fuss, and stated that the new Number Four men were to be our squad leaders "until such time as other men proved themselves to be better.--So go to it," he added grimly. Then he marched us back to the street, where the tents were all freshly numbered with chalk, and dismissed us to put our beds in the proper order.

Since military regulations cover the positions of beds in the tent, almost every man had to s.h.i.+ft his place. A genius discovered that this was a good time to begin with a level floor, the idea ran rapidly from squad to squad, and presently the street was filled with piled cots and heaped baggage, while from each door came clouds of dust. Our floor levelled, taking care to preserve the pitch of the ridge that runs through it, we moved in again, even before the dust was settled. As I am Number One of our front rank, I bunk to the left of the door; peer around the opening, and you will see my feet. Our rifles and bayonets we keep in a gun rack that leans against the tripod of the tent-pole; and our surplus clothes we hang from a square frame that is suspended higher up.

These two conveniences are squad property, being bought at a dollar each from a Jewish-looking gentleman who offered them for sale, their evident usefulness forcing the bargain. As they are most roughly built of light lumber, and have plainly served in each of the previous camps this year, there is good profit to the speculators who supplied them in the first place, and who gather them up when they are abandoned at the breaking up of each camp, only to sell them again. The tax on the squad is not great, but I wonder why the camp management allows outsiders such princely takings.

Feeling energetic, I began digging out the old ditch that surrounds our tent, to make it better able to carry off water in the next storm.

Knudsen insisted on doing his share, then Corder took the spade from him for the next side. When Pickle, who was standing ready, said "_You_ don't need to work," Corder asked plaintively, "Do I seem as old as that?" So he was allowed to do his stint. Lucy placidly watched us.

Then, it being yet early afternoon, the typhoid candidates, more than half the company, were gathered up and taken away to be punctured. The small remainder of us were taken to the drill field and were delivered to the sergeants, apparently that they might show their mettle in the presence of the officers. Now you know that every calling has its tests of a man; in this soldier business the first lies in the ability to stand up and give your orders with such confidence in yourself that your men shall feel confidence in you. There were two of the sergeants that I noticed for their difference in this respect. The one was sunburned, tall, and lean; his brows jutted, his eyes under them were steady and sharp, his shoulders were square, and he had a very firm pair of bow-legs, which in some men is not displeasing. He knew his job; his voice rolled like the deep notes of an organ; we knew what he meant for us to do, and we did it. The other man was narrow and chicken-breasted, his long legs weak, his smile a smirk, his p.r.o.nunciation so affected that we disgraced him because we blundered from pure lack of comprehension.

Why is it that men's outsides so often correspond to their innards? And how did the latter of these two get his job? I suppose he has done some service to warrant his sergeant's stripes.

Corder and I went to the lake to swim. He interests me by the careful study of his condition; is afraid that some sign of old age will develop to send him away, and is almost boyishly pleased to find himself able to do all the work. "And I hope," said he, "that I shall learn to stand straighter. One feels a certain pride when in uniform, and I try to fill mine out, if only to escape hearing some youngster say, 'Gee, get onto that hollow-chested professor chap as a rookie!' But it's hard to keep straight." The prime of life, he said to me again, isn't so very prime.

When we came back the street was full of invalids. Army serum must work quick, for half the arms of the inoculees were lame, and when I thoughtlessly touched Pickle on the shoulder he howled. "The guy that counted out my half billion bugs," said he, "must have thrown in an extra hundred thousand for good measure. And they're all working overtime." At Retreat there was some difficulty in coaxing arms into blouses, and a number of men asked to be excused from evening duties for the sole purpose of lying upon their couches and staring at the canvas.

The rest of us marched to our first conference, on the slope of the drill field below the furthest mess-shacks, where we were ma.s.sed in a semi-circle. It was an interesting sight, a thousand men in olive-drab slowly blending with their background as the dusk grew, yet with the faces of most of them showing up in the coming moonlight. Behind the speaker were the lake and the mountains, with the moon just beginning to glimmer on the little waves. It was the General himself who addressed us, welcoming us, speaking briefly of the purpose of our coming, expressing confidence that we would work as hard as our predecessors: a fine man-to-man address. I could not help thinking of a German general that I once heard speak to _Einjaehriger_--stiff, short, and unapproachable.

Wood was stimulating, and made us readier for our duties.

The moon was brighter when we got back to the company street, and someone had lighted a fire at its head. Here a hundred of us, including some of the invalids, packed together in a circle around our new captain, while he spoke to us briefly. I had a good view of him. Shorter than the lieutenant, yet still a tall man, very strongly made, he spoke, like the general, as man to man, and the least thing he appeared to expect was any difficulty with us. He told us that the work was hard and tiresome; he would make it as easy as possible, but he knew we were there to work, and we could depend on him (without a twinkle) to give us everything that was coming to us. His tent was right at the head of the street; he wanted us to come to him at any time for any question; it was his business (and again no twinkle) to make our minds as well as our bodies comfortable.

Thus I get the impression that he is something of a humorist, yet also that his chief trait is aggressiveness. I cannot tell you why, for all was spoken with a quiet voice, even with a certain gentleness that disguises what I am sure is the basic character of the man. Knudsen felt it too, for as we walked away from the conference he said: "The captain's a sc.r.a.pper."

"He's a Southerner," said Clay with satisfaction. It had been plain in his accent.

This letter, begun Sat.u.r.day night, I finish Sunday morning. Send me, please, a dozen clothes pins, to keep my was.h.i.+ng on the tent-ropes.

Pickle hung up his wet towel today, and had to chase it into the next company street. As everywhere is the same black sand, you can imagine its condition, likewise that of a moist cake of soap when you accidentally drop it--excellent for scouring, but not good for other cleaning purposes until its new covering is dissolved away. Send me also some paper napkins folded; the supply at the mess-shacks sometimes gives out.

A bit of character. Lucy was looking this morning rather helplessly at his silk pajamas, and wondering where he could get them washed, when there entered the tent a handsome and stalwart regular. "Was.h.i.+ng?" he inquired respectfully. "Oh," asked Lucy hopefully, "are you an agent for some laundress?" "No," said the man, "I wash them myself. I guarantee to return everything tomorrow, properly done." The boy was not merely surprised, but almost shocked. "_You_ do the work?" he asked. Then his native kindness came to his aid, and he was about to bundle all his clothes into the fellow's hands, when Knudsen said, quietly but very pointedly, "When I'm here at camp I wash my own clothes." David flushed quite pink. "Then I think I'll do the same."

"It's good for him," said Knudsen to me afterward. "It's good for him to be called Lucy. It's good for him to learn to shave himself with that razor. I was going to tell him to buy himself a safety razor, but thought I'd better not."

I'm glad I left David to find his own nurse. Knudsen manages him with certainty. On the other hand the boy likes him immensely, even though the taciturn Swede does but a small share of the talking when they are together. He is a foundryman, had a hard struggle to establish his growing business, and has in consequence a fierce outlook on the world, as one who at any time may have to fight for his own. David, by persistent but most tactful questioning, has brought out two salient facts in his biography. Knudsen is first the son of an immigrant, talks Swedish in his home, has none of the American background which to David is a man's birthright. And second he is a college man, from Hobart. Over these two facts the boy is sadly perplexed. Legally, Knudsen is as American as the rest of us--but can he be? Socially he is also all right, since he is a college man--but after all can you call Hobart a college?

Don't blame David. It's not his fault if he's narrow-minded.

I shall close and mail this letter now, and at the first convenient opportunity shall begin the next. I foresee that my letters to you will be practically a continuous performance. Love from

d.i.c.k.

FROM PRIVATE SAMUEL PICKLE TO HIS BROTHER

Plattsburg Training Camp.

Sunday, Sept. 10, 1916.

Say, Tony, what a mutt I was not to get myself jabbed for typhoid before I came here! It would have been worth the money. Today my arm feels like a hornet's nest, with roots up into my shoulder and down my ribs. And my head is light and wavy--that's fever. I saw one guy keel over stiff when the doctor stuck him, and the poor corp of our squad says he'd swap jobs with his rear-rank man if he could only feel like a boy again.

They feed you here with food that's like ourselves, coa.r.s.e and plentiful.

I'll never again call sister's doughnuts sinkers; wish I could see any kind of a doughnut. The table china is delicate French--nit. The waiters are in livery. The man with a long reach will grow fat while others starve. Take care not to spill anything; it may fall into your hat that hangs under the table. Iced tea should be iced and should be tea; milk should be milk. When you see a thing that you want, ask for it; the platter will get to you even if the food don't. Elbows on the table are comfort but bad form, same as at home. The men that stay longest at table take pains to tell you that they eat slow. Eat first whatever is handiest when you sit down; why be idle while your soup is coming?

It's considered impolite to drink at the company spigot, but there's no rule against cleaning your teeth there. The best way to rinse your stocking after soaping is to hold it over the nozzle like a bag, and squeeze it while the water runs through. It takes so long to get hot water here that you'd better learn to shave with cold. I never before made my toilet out on the sidewalk, but a fellow can get used to anything.

You may talk of being chambermaid to a cow, but it's worse being groom to a gun. These rifles have been in use all summer, and they're all et up inside. They're like fat men, they sweat. Then they rust. Put in some dope and swab the barrel, then take twenty-five d.i.n.ky little squares of cotton flannel and run them through, and the last will be just as dirty as the first. Let it go at that, and put in some oil, and say d.a.m.n.