Several men offered to read the letter to Pugh, but he did not answer.
An hour later the first sergeant was walking up and down in front of the billets, blowing his whistle. Bugle-calls were taboo.
“Shake it up, you men. Don’t you know you’re supposed to be ready for drill at nine o’clock?”
“Drill! I thought we come up here to fight,” voices grumbled, muttering obscene phrases directed at General Pershing, the company commander, and the first sergeant.
Men scurried out of their billets, struggling to get on their packs and to fall in line before the roll was called.
“Fall in!” the little sergeant shouted, standing before the platoon. “Right dress!” he commanded sharply and ran to the right of the platoon, from where he told one man to draw in his waist and another to move his feet, and so on, until he was satisfied that the line was reasonably straight. “Steady, front!” And in a very military manner he placed himself in the proper place before the company and began to call the roll.
“All present or accounted for, sir,” he reported to the captain, a note of pride and of a great deed nobly done ringing in his voice.
The sergeants fell back in rear of the platoons and the commander ordered “squads right.” The hobnailed boots of the men on the cobblestones echoed hollowly down the street.
Stupid-looking old Frenchmen, a few thick-waisted women, and a scattering of ragged children dully watched the company march down the street. For the most part they were living in the advance area because they had no other place to go and because they feared to leave the only homes that they had ever known.
The platoon marched out of the town along a gravel road and into a green, evenly plotted field, where they were deployed and where, to their surprise, a number of sacks, filled with straw, had been hung from a row of scaffolding.