II
Well, we was sort of waiting off stage as you might call it, in a little town in Belgium, our act having just been on and a pretty lively one it was and the Captain give us a pretty good hand on it, although as you know the audience didn't wait for the finish but left us their orchestra seats or front line trenches which we moved into and then give up to the next number on the bill and come back to watch from the wings, or would of only we was a little too far off.
Well, the Capt. felt so good and the water was so bad that he sent a delegation back for a little liquid refreshment. They have big jugs over here like the molasses is kept in at home only here it is frankly boose and no one pretends any different. And the game is this. The one which volunteers for this dangerous work, if broke himself, takes a swig or so out of the jug he is bringing back which it dont show on account of their not being transparent and so the officer dont get any surprise until toward the end of the jug and even so may think he took more than he had thought. The private will take only a little from each but if there is jugs enough many a mickle makes quite a jag.
Well, me and a fellow named McFarland and a French kid called Ceasare was each given two of these molasses jugs which looked like props, and was sent off to a village some place in congnito for you couldn't pronounce it. And we was glad enough to go because among other things we was short of smokes. Some cleaver actor had accidintly lit the last mess fire with a bale of Virginias and there wasnt hardly a smoke among us.
You just figure out how it would feel if you was to have a bath and do your exercise and eat a swell breakfast and then realise there wasnt a pill in the house! Think sweetie, how your brest would swell up with alarm, and the royal fit you would throw while the elevator boy was on his way to the corner drug store! Why figure even the way you feel once you get a cigarette in your face and then cant find a match for two whole minutes. Well, take it or leave it, I tell you that feeling is a whole lot multiplied on the victorious fields of France when little friend cigarette is notable by its absence. A empty house on an opening night is nothing to it. So you can see where me and Ceasare and Mac was glad to get in the neighborhood of one, leaving even all considerations of the wine aside.
Well, we started out carrying each two jugs and as we went the fellow which acts as usher, or sentry on the road hollers at us do we know the way and Ceasare and him jabbered at each other in French in the remarkable fluent way they do over here. And Ceasare laughed and when we asked what it was he said the guy told him to look out Fritz didnt get us on the open road, which was certainly some joke for of course we hadn't been able to get near enough to Fritz to hear him in some time. So we laughed, too, for if any snipers had managed to stay behind and opened up on us we could of spotted them and wiped them out if they had kept it up.
Well sweetie, there wasnt any road exactly toward the place we was bound for on account of our having done considerable trespassing on private property and taking little notice of fences whether barbed-wire or civilian or shell-holes or trenches but having went straight ahead. And after the last 5 years on upper Broadway you will realize it comes easy enough to me, I often having come unharmed from the Claridge to the Astor, and the French fields has nothing on that crossing. So to me that first part of the trip was as little or nothing and I was the cheerfulist of the party though we was all pretty cheerful and singing a little song of Ceasare's which I dont know what it means but I guess I'd better not write it in for fear you would.
Well, it was late afternoon and awful cold for the time of year, and I was thinking that at home the frost was on the pumpkin and the pumpkin would soon be in the pie and the turkey was about to get the axe and Halloween was due and a lot of nice things like that. And after a lot of kilomets had been covered, we come to the funny little town which looked like the back-drop to the opening seane in a musical comedy only all shot to pieces like it had been on the road with a No. 2 company for a long and successful tower.
Well, we come to it, anyhow, and being on duty in a way as far as them jugs went—we went with them and took what we could afford our ownselves while we watched papa Ceasare fill 'em up. Then the tobacco dept. claimed our attention only to find there wasn't any!
Well, sweetie, I have tried to put over the way I felt at these glad tidings and the censor wouldn't of stood for it, so out she goes! But I felt that way all right and so did Mac and Ceasare.
"I'll no beleeve ut!" says Mack which he talks a funny kind of way like Harry Lauder. "I'll no beleeve ut—theer must be some someplace aboot!"
"Say la guyer!" says Ceasare and gives a shrug, although he was a lot more disappointed than Mac on account of Mac's really caring more for liquor than smoke any day. "Say la Guyer!" he says, and asks his pa why it happened and his pa tells him and he translates it to Mac and me.
"He say a young lady have took it all only hour ago for free to soldiers," he explains.
And take it or leave it, but I was certainly a little sore for although I am the first to believe in the other fellow getting it, still this time we all felt like the other fellow was us, and no doubt she had took it to the nearest camp or hut, and so I ast which way was it she went for mebbe we would get some of it. And then come a big surprise.
"No 'ospitil here!" Ceasare explained again. "An no 'ut! It ees too soon after we take it. Then papa says she is first cross red lady we have seen and she speak in French!"
"Well, that's funny!" I says—and of course dearie you understand this had been enemy ground only a little before and that there was a wine-shop going was a miricle and only for it being Ceasare's papa we wouldn't of got none, which is how he come to be along with us.
Well, we all felt real sore and disappointed but took it like a man for of course a red cross nurse would get it for the wounded and we had our health.
So papa give us all another round and we took the big molasses jugs and started off. It was getting toward twilight and pretty cold and I will say it give me sort of sore feeling towards the folks at home and blamed them for letting me be without a cigarette and you know how it is about two drinks makes me a little sore at things and I began to cheer up after the third and this was early in the evening.
Not so Mac. He has a talent for drink. Well, we had just about left the motion-picture village behind us when he commenced to sing and while I dont know what it was about, I will put it down this time because you wont know neither.
"Fortune if thou'll but gie me still
Hale Breeks, a scone, an' whisky gill,
An' rowth o' ryme to rave at will,
Tak' a' the rest,
"An' deal 't about as they blind skill
Directss thee best."
Well, naturally we applauded which is always safe when you don't understand a thing, and it certainly was comical for Mac is generally a quiet cuss and a tightwad as well. Then I spoke up.
"These jugs is too heavy!" I says. "Let's lighten 'em up a bit."
Well they thought so and we done it and felt better and then I sang them:
"Give me your love
The sunshine of your eyes!"
And both Ceasare and Mac commenced to cry. Mac set down his jugs and we done the same and then Mac done the most generous thing I ever seen a Scotchman do even in liquor. He reached inside his bonnett and took out three cigarettes, shook the bonnett to show they was actually the last, and give us each one and one to himself.
Well, we all sat down on a old motor chassis or what was left of it, and burned them smokes like insense, not speaking a word! But putting that red cross lady which had been ahead of us out of our minds and thinking only of how we was going to give Mac our next packages from home when they come, and he mebbe thinking of how he was going to get them. And then we all made our jugs a little lighter and by this time it was pretty dark and we commenced to hurry back. Before we had went very far we had to hesitate about which way. Because sweetie, take it or leave it, what you write about getting lost in the new subway has nothing on finding your way about after dark by yourself in this part of the world.
Well, Mac was sure we come one way and I was sure we come another and Ceasare he had a different hunch from either of us. So we all took another little drink as it was getting mighty cold by now, and in the end we started off Ceasare's way because why wouldnt he know best which way was right and him born and raised right there on the farm? We trusted to his judgment just like him and Mac would of trusted me to tell the taxi-driver where to go from Keens.
So we went like he said, but somehow we didn't seem to get no place in particular although we kept on going for a long time: I couldn't say how long, but it seemed like a Battery to Harlem job to me only by now I loved everybody but Fritz and a sort of fog had come up or so I thought, and we was all singing, each our own sweet songs but at the same time.
"Lets throw away a few of these jugs," I remember saying—and really there was so little in some of them it wasn't worth carrying back so we just finished them off and threw them away and then we come upon a little path—or it felt like it.
"Allou!" shouted Ceasare, "we are almost there!" and with that we sure got the surprise of our lifes, for rat-tat-tat-tat-tat come a sputter of machine gun fire right at us.