Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Chicago first. Buzz had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he
hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering,
terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness,
were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and
the self-confidence temporarily out of him. But only temporarily.
Then came a camp. A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present
cantonments are luxurious. The United States Government took Buzz Werner
by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him
thus, shook him into shape--and into submission. And eventually--though
it required months--into an understanding of why that submission was
manly, courageous, and fine. But before he learned that he learned many
other things. He learned there was little good in saying, "Aw, g'wan!"
to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house
for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and
refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for
doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He
learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a
dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an
olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so
sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from
limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with
a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went
through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded
them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim,
six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless,
merciless--a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between
thumb and finger--like that!--who made life a hell for Buzz Werner.
Until his muscles became used to it.
"One--_two_!--three! One--_two_--three! One--_two_--three!" yelled this
person. And, "_In_hale! _Ex_hale! _In_hale! _Ex_hale!" till Buzz's lungs
were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a
sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms,
neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached,
yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always
with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! _Whup_!" Buzz whupped with
the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz
felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant
would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he
wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet
with sweat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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