Beyond him not the ghost of shores,
Beyond him only shoreless seas.
And now the voice and the words, caught up and repeated by other voices, harsh voices, tired voices, thin high pitched voices.
Fours right into line—
Fours right into line.
* * * * *
Three young men having run the guard line, together are walking along a dark road toward a southern city. In the city and later when they have stood on street corners and walked through the section of the city where only Negroes live—being Ohio boys and fascinated by the strangeness of the notion of a race thus set aside—they go into a saloon where they sit drinking beer. They discuss their officers, the position of the officer in relation to his men. “I think it’s all right,” says a doctor’s son. “Ed and Dug are all right. They have to live off by themselves and act as though they were something special, kind of grand and wise and gaudy. It’s a kind of bluff, I guess, that has to be kept up, only I should think it would be kind of tough on them. I should think they might get to feeling they were something special and get themselves into a mess.”
And now Ed, the raiser of celery, comes into the saloon. He is saving all he can of his officer’s pay hoping to buy a few additional acres of land when he gets back home and he doesn’t much like spending money. He sees the three sitting there and wants to join them but hesitates. Then he calls to me and he and I go off together along a street and into another saloon.
The celery raiser is a devout Catholic and he and I get into a discussion. I have some money and am buying the beer and so it goes on for a long time. I speak of the feeling I have when I have marched for a long time in rhythm with many other men and Ed nods his head. “It’s the same way I feel about the Church,” he says. “That’s just the way we Catholics get to feeling about the Church.”
At the camp Ed, being an officer, can walk boldly in but I, being but a corporal and having gone off to town without leave, must creep along the guard line to where a fellow from my own town is stationed. “Who goes there?” he demands sternly; and “Ah, cut it Will, you big boob. Don’t make such a racket,” I answer as I go past him and creep away in the darkness to my tent.