4
Perhaps there was plenty of war left, but McGee 213soon discovered that a badly broken arm and a cracked, cut head can be painfully slow in healing. Days dragged slowly by, with Larkin’s visits as the only bright spot in the enforced inactivity. Then, to McGee’s further distress, the squadron was moved to another front. Larkin had been unable to tell him just where they were going, but believed it was to the eastward, where it was rumored the Americans were to be given a purely American sector.
This was unpleasant news to McGee. It meant that he would be left behind, and he could not drag from the hospital medicoes any guess as to when he would be permitted to leave the hospital.
Hospital life, with its endless waiting, sapped his enthusiasm. At night, in the wards, the men recovering from all manner of wounds would try to speed the lagging hours by telling stories, singing songs, and inventing the wildest of rumors. Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle shell. In a few moments the ward would be a clamorous inferno of mimic battle sounds–machine guns popping, shells screaming toward explosion, cries of gas, and the simulated agonized wails of the wounded and dying.
“Hit the dirt! Here comes a G.I. can.”
214“Look out for that flying pig!”
“Over the top, my buckoes, and give ’em the bayonet.”
Thus did men, wrecks in the path of war, keep alive their spirit and courage by jesting over the grimest tragedy that had ever entered their lives. And then they would take up rollicking marching songs, or sing dolefully, “I wanta go home, I wanta go home.”
Invariably, when some chap began a narrative of the prowess of his own company or regiment, the others would begin singing, tauntingly:
“The old grey mare she ain’t
what she used to be,
She ain’t what she used to be,
Ain’t what she used to be.
The old grey mare she ain’t
what she used to be
Many years ago....”