Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
The turbulent flaring darkness was calming to the grey of dawn when
Chrisfield stopped marching. His eyelids stung as if his eyeballs were
flaming hot. He could not feel his feet and legs. The guns continued
incessantly like a hammer beating on his head. He was walking very
slowly in a single file, now and then stumbling against the man ahead
of him. There was earth on both sides of him, clay walls that dripped
moisture. All at once he stumbled down some steps into a dugout, where
it was pitch-black. An unfamiliar smell struck him, made him uneasy; but
his thoughts seemed to reach him from out of a great distance. He groped
to the wall. His knees struck against a bunk with blankets in it. In
another second he was sunk fathoms deep in sleep.
When he woke up his mind was very clear. The roof of the dugout was of
logs. A bright spot far away was the door. He hoped desperately that he
wasn't on duty. He wondered where Andy was; then he remembered that Andy
was crazy,--“a yeller dawg,” Judkins had called him. Sitting up with
difficulty he undid his shoes and puttees, wrapped himself in his
blanket. All round him were snores and the deep breathing of exhausted
sleep. He closed his eyes.
He was being court-martialled. He stood with his hands at his sides
before three officers at a table. All three had the same white faces
with heavy blue jaws and eyebrows that met above the nose. They were
reading things out of papers aloud, but, although he strained his ears,
he couldn't make out what they were saying. All he could hear was a
faint moaning. Something had a curious unfamiliar smell that troubled
him. He could not stand still at attention, although the angry eyes of
officers stared at him from all round. “Anderson, Sergeant Anderson,
what's that smell?” he kept asking in a small whining voice. “Please
tell a feller what that smell is.” But the three officers at the table
kept reading from their papers, and the moaning grew louder and louder
in his ears until he shrieked aloud. There was a grenade in his hand. He
pulled the string out and threw it, and he saw the lieutenant's trench
coat stand out against a sheet of flame. Someone sprang at him. He was
wrestling for his life with Anderson, who turned into a woman with
huge flabby breasts. He crushed her to him and turned to defend himself
against three officers who came at him, their trench coats drawn in
tightly at the waist until they looked like wasps. Everything faded, he
woke up.
His nostrils were still full of the strange troubling smell. He sat on
the edge of the bunk, wriggling in his clothes, for his body crawled
with lice.
“Gee, it's funny to be in where the Fritzies were not long ago,” he
heard a voice say.
“Kiddo! we're advancin',” came another voice.
“But, hell, this ain't no kind of an advance. I ain't seen a German
yet.”
“Ah kin smell 'em though,” said Chrisfield, getting suddenly to his
feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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