Behind them, crammed somehow into weeks, were Quantico, the transport, Brest, a French troop-train. Then there was the golden country around St. Aignan, the “Saint Onion” of Americans, a country full of growing wheat and fields of red-topped clover, picture-book houses, and neat little forests. A country stripped of men, where the women were competent and kindly. Almost any place you could get noble omelets and white wine that tasted better than chlorinated water—good kick in it, too. “I tell you, Boots, an’ you remember it, this here France is a fine place to have a war in. Now, Haiti, an’ in Nicaragua, an’ in China, it’s nowhere near as good. I hope Germany will be as good, when—” So Sergeant McGee, with his double rows of ribbons and his hash marks, over a canteen full of eau de vie—old-timer he was.
The war was represented by demoniac non-coms, instructors in this and that. Bayonet drills—“Come on, now; lemme hear you—‘What do we wash our bay’nets in?—German blood!’—Aw—sing out like you meant it, you dam’ replacements! I’ll swear, it’s a shame to feed animals like you to the Germans—” Gas-mask drill—“Take more than five seconds, an’ your Maw gets a Gold Star—Now!—the gas-alert position—O, for Gawd’s sake, you guy, you wit’ the two left feet—” “But, sergeant, I find that I have a certain difficulty—” Sergeants also swear terribly.... There was every kind of drill, eight hours a day of it, and police work.
Rumors of great battles in the north. Glum and sad civilians—they were glum and sad everywhere in France, that spring of 1918—talking in anxious groups after the town crier with his drum passed. Another troop-train—maybe the same train that was carelessly left alongside a train containing the wine ration for some French division, the papers in which case are probably still accumulating. Camions after that. The replacements debussed late of a June afternoon and went up a great white road between exactly spaced poplars. They marched first in column of squads, then in column of files, platoons on opposite sides of the empty road. At the crest of a slope the column stopped. You could see, hanging above the sky-line to the north and east, curious shapes—“Look like a elephant’s head, bows on, wit’ his ears out, don’t they, sergeant?” The tall non-com who was guiding the column—a silent man—observed to the replacement officer in charge: “We’ll stop here, sir. Boche sausages yonder—observation balloons—see the whole country. We’ll wait till dark.”
Pencil sketches made on scraps of paper, in Belleau Wood.
The detachment was glad to fall out, off the road. It sat in little groups, silent for the most part, and listened to a mutter and a rumble in the direction of the blimps. A dark, high plane came into view from the east; its motor filled the ear with a deep, vibrant droning, oddly ominous. All at once the air around it was stippled with little puff-balls, white against the blue. You could hear the drumming of artillery, and the faint cough of bursting shrapnel, very far off. The plane went away. “—Yes, sir. Anti-aircraft stuff. Pretty, but it seldom hits anything—though it does run ’em off. Theirs is black....” The sergeant only spoke when spoken to; there was a look about his eyes—he was the survivor of a platoon that was sixty strong two days before. The sun set, and the day drowsed into the long twilight. Presently the sergeant said: “We can move now, sir.” The replacements moved, making no conversation.
A little country road led them off the highway. They passed a shattered farmhouse where a few soldiers lounged in the dusk. “Regimental, sir. Gets shelled a lot. No, sir, they don’t expect you to report. Somebody on the road to meet you....” A little group of officers rose out of the ditch, yawning. They looked slack and tired. “Replacement column? You in charge? Yes—assignments made back in Brigade. You’ll go to—Henry: your battalion gets a hundred and seventy, with five officers. Take ’em off the head of the column—tell Major Turrill——”
The detachment followed the officer called Henry, who set what they considered an immoderate pace. He passed the word: “Don’t bunch up; if a plane comes over low, don’t look up at it—he can see your faces; no smokin’, an’ don’t talk—” Sergeant McGee thought audibly: “Where have I seen that bird? Was it in Managua, that time they broke me for ... was it in Cuba?—where the devil—he was somebody’s sergeant-major—” They turned off the lane and went through a wheat-field. The sky was sword-blade blue, with a handful of stars. There was a loom of woods ahead, the tops of them outlined by greenish flares ceaselessly ascending somewhere beyond. They heard a machine-gun. “Sounds like one of these here steam-riveters, now, don’t it?...” A vagrant puff of wind blew a smell across the column, a smell terrible and searing to the nose. “Phew! dead hawses—” The officer named Henry spoke crisply. “Those are not,” he said, “dead horses.” The replacements sweated and felt cold, and thirsty too. They went on, very silent.
They went through a gap in a hedge and were at another crossroads. “Fall out here, an’ form combat packs. Leave your stuff under the hedge. Take one blanket. Come on—quickly, now!—an’ don’t bunch up!—” The replacements formed combat packs expertly, remembering Parris Island and Quantico. “Smartly, now! Come by here, fill your pockets—each man take two boxes hard bread—Where’ll you carry them? How in hell do I know—There!”
Two goods-boxes sat close together, and the men filed between them. One box had dried prunes in it, the other bread. “Don’t stop! don’t stop! Right down that road, an’ keep movin’!”