Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
“All right, corporal,” Fuselli answered cheerfully. He wanted to make
a good impression. “Fellers'll be sayin' 'All right, corporal,' to me
soon,” he thought. An idea that he repelled came into his mind. The
corporal didn't look strong. He wouldn't last long overseas. And he
pictured Mabe writing Corporal Dan Fuselli, O.A.R.D.5.
At the end of the afternoon, the lieutenant appeared suddenly, his face
flushed, his trench coat stiffer than ever.
“All right, sergeant; line up your men,” he said in a breathless voice.
All down the camp street companies were forming. One by one they marched
out in columns of fours and halted with their packs on. The day was
getting amber with sunset. Retreat sounded.
Fuselli's mind had suddenly become very active. The notes of the bugle
and of the band playing “The Star Spangled Banner” sifted into his
consciousness through a dream of what it would be like over there. He
was in a place like the Exposition ground, full of old men and women
in peasant costume, like in the song, “When It's Apple Blossom Time in
Normandy.” Men in spiked helmets who looked like firemen kept charging
through, like the Ku-Klux Klan in the movies, jumping from their horses
and setting fire to buildings with strange outlandish gestures, spitting
babies on their long swords. Those were the Huns. Then there were flags
blowing very hard in the wind, and the sound of a band. The Yanks were
coming. Everything was lost in a scene from a movie in which khaki-clad
regiments marched fast, fast across the scene. The memory of the
shouting that always accompanied it drowned out the picture. “The guns
must make a racket, though,” he added as an after-thought.
“Atten-shun!
“Forwa--ard, march!”
The long street of the camp was full of the tramping of feet. They were
off. As they passed through the gate Fuselli caught a glimpse of Chris
standing with his arm about Andrews's shoulders. They both waved.
Fuselli grinned and expanded his chest. They were just rookies still. He
was going overseas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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