Tell me, do you use your rifle much, or is it mostly big gun work?”
“Naw; after all the months I spent learnin' how to drill with my goddam rifle, I'll be a sucker if I've used it once. I'm in the grenade squad.”
Someone at the end of the room had started singing:
“O Mademerselle from Armenteers, Parley voo!”
The man with the nervous voice went on talking, while the song roared about them.
“I don't spend a night without thinkin' o' them funny helmets the Fritzies wear. Have you ever thought that there was something goddam funny about the shape o' them helmets?”
“Can the helmets, kid,” said his friend. “You told us all about them onct.”
“I ain't told you why I can't forgit 'em, have I?”
“A German officer crossed the Rhine;
Parley voo?
A German officer crossed the Rhine;
He loved the women and liked the wine;
Hanky Panky, parley voo.... ”
“Listen to this, fellers,” said the man in his twitching nervous voice, staring straight into Fuselli's eyes. “We made a little attack to straighten out our trenches a bit just before I got winged. Our barrage cut off a bit of Fritzie's trench an' we ran right ahead juss about dawn an' occupied it. I'll be goddamned if it wasn't as quiet as a Sunday morning at home.”
“It was!” said his friend.
“An' I had a bunch of grenades an' a feller came runnin' up to me, whisperin', 'There's a bunch of Fritzies playin' cards in a dugout. They don't seem to know they're captured. We'd better take 'em pris'ners!”
“'Pris'ners, hell,' says I, 'We'll go and clear the buggars out.' So we crept along to the steps and looked down.... ”
The song had started again:
“O Mademerselle from Armenteers,
Parley voo?
“Their helmets looked so damn like toadstools I came near laughin'. An' they sat round the lamp layin' down the cards serious-like, the way I've seen Germans do in the Rathskeller at home.”
“He loved the women and liked the wine,
Parley voo?
“I lay there lookin' at 'em for a hell of a time, an' then I clicked a grenade an' tossed it gently down the steps. An' all those funny helmets like toadstools popped up in the air an' somebody gave a yell an' the light went out an' the damn grenade went off. Then I let 'em have the rest of 'em an' went away 'cause one o' 'em was still moanin'-like. It was about that time they let their barrage down on us and I got mine.”
“The Yanks are havin' a hell of a time,
Parley voo?
“An' the first thing I thought of when I woke up was how those goddam helmets looked. It upsets a feller to think of a thing like that.” His voice ended in a whine like the broken voice of a child that has been beaten.
“You need to pull yourself together, kid,” said his friend.
“I know what I need, Tub. I need a woman.”
“You know where you get one?” asked Meadville. “I'd like to get me a nice little French girl a rainy night like this.”
“It must be a hell of a ways to the town.... They say it's full of M. P.'s too,” said Fuselli.
“I know a way,” said the man with the nervous voice, “Come on; Tub.”
“No, I've had enough of these goddam frog women.”
They all left the canteen.
As the two men went off down the side of the building, Fuselli heard the nervous twitching voice through the metallic patter of the rain:
“I can't find no way of forgettin' how funny the helmets looked all round the lamp... I can't find no way.... ”
Bill Grey and Fuselli pooled their blankets and slept together. They lay on the hard floor of the tent very close to each other, listening to the rain pattering endlessly on the drenched canvas that slanted above their heads.
“Hell, Bill, I'm gettin' pneumonia,” said Fuselli, clearing his nose.
“That's the only thing that scares me in the whole goddam business. I'd hate to die o' sickness... an' they say another kid's kicked off with that—what d'they call it?—menegitis.”
“Was that what was the matter with Stein?”
“The corporal won't say.”
“Ole Corp. looks sort o' sick himself,” said Fuselli.
“It's this rotten climate” whispered Bill Grey, in the middle of a fit of coughing.
“For cat's sake quit that coughin'. Let a feller sleep,” came a voice from the other side of the tent.
“Go an' get a room in a hotel if you don't like it.”
“That's it, Bill, tell him where to get off.”
“If you fellers don't quit yellin', I'll put the whole blame lot of you on K. P.,” came the sergeant's good-natured voice.
“Don't you know that taps has blown?”
The tent was silent except for the fast patter of the rain and Bill Grey's coughing.
“That sergeant gives me a pain in the neck,” muttered Bill Grey peevishly, when his coughing had stopped, wriggling about under the blankets.
After a while Fuselli said in a very low voice, so that no one but his friend should hear:
“Say, Bill, ain't it different from what we thought it was going to be?”
“Yare.”
“I mean fellers don't seem to think about beatin' the Huns at all, they're so busy crabbin' on everything.”
“It's the guys higher up that does the thinkin',” said Grey grandiloquently.
“Hell, but I thought it'd be excitin' like in the movies.”
“I guess that was a lot o' talk.”
“Maybe.”
Fuselli went to sleep on the hard floor, feeling the comfortable warmth of Grey's body along the side of him, hearing the endless, monotonous patter of the rain on the drenched canvas above his head. He tried to stay awake a minute to remember what Mabe looked like, but sleep closed down on him suddenly.
The bugle wrenched them out of their blankets before it was light. It was not raining. The air was raw and full of white mist that was cold as snow against their faces still warm from sleep. The corporal called the roll, lighting matches to read the list. When he dismissed the formation the sergeant's voice was heard from the tent, where he still lay rolled in his blankets.
“Say, Corp, go an' tell Fuselli to straighten out Lieutenant Stanford's room at eight sharp in Officers' Barracks, Number Four.”
“Did you hear, Fuselli?”
“All right,” said Fuselli. His blood boiled up suddenly. This was the first time he'd had to do servants' work. He hadn't joined the army to be a slavey to any damned first loot. It was against army regulations anyway. He'd go and kick. He wasn't going to be a slavey.... He walked towards the door of the tent, thinking what he'd say to the sergeant. But he noticed the corporal coughing into his handkerchief with an expression of pain on his face. He turned and strolled away. It would get him in wrong if he started kicking like that. Much better shut his mouth and put up with it. The poor old corp couldn't last long at this rate. No, it wouldn't do to get in wrong.
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