Conscript 2989 Part 6

We were marched over to one of the infantry barracks on the edge of the big parade grounds and there we found our rifles; I mean ours for the day only, because there are hardly enough in camp to equip us all yet and we have to take turns using them. In the same way there is only one field piece to each artillery company, but that doesn't seem to worry the artillery men much.

They are doing some real drilling over on the other side of the camp. I was surprised to discover a company at work digging trenches, another company practising throwing hand grenades, with stones representing the deadly Mill's bombs, still another group constructing parapets of sand bags, and working out machine gun emplacements, and in the distance artillery companies hovering about a sleek looking gun, learning the complicated parts and where and how the animals are served.

Krags, instead of Springfields, are the rifles available for drilling purposes here, and for the first hour this morning we devoted our time to learning the floor plan of the thing. I was getting along famously until Fat interrupted my investigations with the muzzle of his weapon.

Soon after that we started drilling. And I think it is to our credit that before noon we had mastered all the movements and that our pieces snapped up to position with real vigour.

"Let me hear them hands slap them pieces," said the Sergeant; then "Ri-sholler-harms! One-two-three-four! Pep, that's it, pep an' snap.

Slap 'em hard. Ordah-harms! One-two-three! _Done_ drop 'em-_done_ slam 'em down. Nex' man slams 'em gits kitchen p'lice."

So we drilled until our arms ached, and rifles that weighed about eight pounds at the beginning of the drill seemed to have increased to fifty pounds, and felt as long as telephone poles. Perhaps we weren't glad when our First Lieutenant put a stop to the punishment and started us in the general direction of the mess hall.

And we had beef stew for dinner; beef stew with rich brown gravy, such as our old biscuit shooter alone can make.

But after mess we were back at it again. Only this time it was bayonet practice, but not of the variety pictured in most magazines. We haven't reached the stage of charging trenches and swinging bundles of sticks.

Such advanced work comes later.

Bayonets are awkward, ugly things, and I could not help being grateful that Fat took it into his head to poke me in the mouth with his rifle this morning instead of this afternoon. If he had waited until after mess he wouldn't have split my lip; he would have cut my head off. When I saw him with bayonet fixed I gave him a wide radius of action. Indeed I avoided him as if he were a plague.

In open, or extended, order we lined up on the parade grounds in front of one of these movable elevated platforms. Our Second Lieutenant mounted this, and with a bayonetted rifle in hand went through the various lunges, thrusts and parries of the bayonet manual, meanwhile giving us a lecture, to the effect that no matter what the War Department intended to do with us, a knowledge of bayonet fighting would be essential. He a.s.sured us that the logical weapon for an American soldier was the rifle. One of our birthrights is markmanship and another is bayonet fighting. He briefly cantered over a century and a half of history of the Republic and pointed out how we had won fame and honour with bullet and bayonet, and he wound up by telling us that every American soldier should prepare himself so that he would be as dangerous to fool with as a stick of dynamite. Picture good-natured Fat impersonating a stick of dynamite.

Then we went at it. We lunged and thrust and parried until perspiration began to stand out on our foreheads. From the corner of my eye I had a vision of Fat trying to disguise himself as a high explosive. Every time he lunged, he would scowl viciously and emit a loud grunt. I discovered a few moments ago, however, that it was a case of over-eating at mess time that caused him to grunt and frown every time he tried to move very fast; not a desire to look ferocious, although I guess it pa.s.sed for that in the eyes of the instructor.

And now I'm told we are to get this sort of training daily for a long period; close order formation in the morning, with rifle and bayonet drill in the afternoon and later on we will do skirmish work, trench work and open order work with rifles. Some of the infantry companies are already doing that. I was treated to the spectacle of two companies scurrying across the upper end of the parade grounds like so many rabbits. Now and then they would fling themselves down on their stomachs and begin snapping away merrily with empty rifles at an imaginary enemy.

We are a tired-looking company to-night. Already half the cots are filled with men, some of them snoring l.u.s.tily and it is only a quarter to ten.

Wednesday:

There are a lot of things calculated to stir a chap's sentimental streak about this camp, particularly the nights; moonlight nights like to-night for instance. Every hard outline of the huge place is softened under the blue-black mantle of night, and the disagreeable things are lost in the heavy shadows and the moonlight floods the open places, and glistens on the rows upon rows of tin roofs and tall, gaunt-looking tin smoke-stacks. Watch-fires (a sanitary precaution) blaze in their deep holes in the rear of each barracks building, and the lonesome fire-guard, bundled in his overcoat and with rifle over his shoulder, stands silhouetted against the night sky beside each flaring pit.

Out on the main streets of the camp are thousands of fellows in khaki, walking aimlessly up and down, while in the by-streets between the barracks buildings one sees shadowy figures and glowing cigarette ends moving about in the darkness. Through the tiny panes of each barracks window, partly obscured by overcoats and sweaters which dangle from pegs inside, filters a warm yellow light, and as one moves down the row, one hears from one building the music of an accordion and the rhythmic shuffle of feet which tells of a "stag" dance being held in the mess hall; while from another comes the soft plunk-plunking of a banjo and the occasional drone of a mouth organ that seeks after harmony, but only succeeds with an effort.

Off to the right toward the parade grounds some fellows are singing and their songs sound mighty good in the moonlight. And from far beyond where the thick pine woods stand out black against the sky comes faintly the hooting of a distant owl.

On the main streets that skirt the outer edge of the cantonment on three sides, the arc lights glisten, like rows of far off diamonds against the velvet of a jewel box, and here and there, where two twinkle, like low-hung stars, stand out the Y.M. shacks where the men are gathering for an evening's recreation.

It is wonderful to wander out such nights as these. Bundled in a sweater to keep out the chill of evening, and with only my pipe for company, I often go tramping off through the by-streets of the camp. The smoke of the hundreds of watch-fires is wafted to me on every breeze and in wood smoke there is a charm; the charm of camping out. Never in my life will I smell the smoke of burning pine wood, but that these nights will come trooping through my memory, and I'm certain that I will be homesick then and want to come back and live them all over again.

And the things I often see:-the fire-guard for instance, who alone out there behind the barracks was trying hard to read a letter by the light of his flickering watch-fire. Was it a letter he had just received and could not wait to open, or was it a letter that he had read many, many times before and was rereading once again? Then the lonesome dog who sat out in the company street and stared up solemnly at the moon, like a lone wolf on the prairie. What instincts were being waked within him by the moonlight? And the silhouette through the window of the chap sitting on his cot patiently plying needle and thread and the two fellows who leaned against the jacketed field piece in front of an artillery barracks and talked in whispers, while through the opened door of the buildings on either hand came the noise of a rousing good time within.

Then the tramp up Tower Hill, where the headquarters building with its darkened windows like sightless eyes stands out from the spa.r.s.e remains of the pine woods, flecked here and there with patches of moonlight.

Far off across the great camp, and across the tops of the pines one can dimly see from the top of the hill the ocean with the moonlight flashing on its surface, and occasionally comes a breath of chilled salt air that stirs a longing, vague and fleeting, as the ocean has always stirred a longing in the soul of the adventurer. From here one can look down upon the great camp. Thousands and thousands of roofs stand out in the moonlight, and the watch-fires twinkle in orderly rows up and down each camp street. Far off to the left are the big machine shops and forges of the construction company, the forge fires glowing red against the night, while faintly comes the far-off ring of anvils. Those forge fires, like the bakery fires, never die.

To the eastward is the railroad terminal with its panting engines and its medley of noises, while nearer at hand but in the same direction is the transport headquarters with its ceaselessly moving caravan of rumbling, grumbling army trucks. All combines to make a picture that holds one spell-bound.

The days here are pleasant indeed, but the nights are almost intoxicating. They cast a spell upon me and leave a memory that can never fade.

Monday:

This place looks like a growing mining town somewhere out West, but for real atmosphere, the civilian camp, outside the reservation, has the cantonment looking really civilized. I went out there this evening after mess; for I heard that there was a cigar store included in the outfit, and the impression I got was a lasting one. Everything of the frontier was there save the saloons and the gambling halls. Shacks, tents (rows upon rows of them), lean-tos and all forms of domiciles. And the men who walked the streets were of every variety, including real lumber jabs in mackinaws and spiked boots, who had come down to cut away the timber; Italians, Poles, Swedes, Slavs and what not, and a real cowgirl, in short skirts and high leather boots, with a silk handkerchief scarf, sombrero and a big thirty-eight strapped to her hip. She, I learned, runs a motor bus between the civilian camp and the nearest towns.

Cook fires twinkled outside of the tents, lights showed through the canvas walls reflecting the huge, grotesque, shadowy figures of the occupants. From one emanated the strains of an accordion and from another the babble of voices that suggested a quarrel over a card game.

I found the cigar store. I found other stores, too, just shacks thrown together, but carrying a stock of everything in the line of wearing apparel and eatables. One displayed the sign of "Jack's Unsurpa.s.sable Lunch," another "The Elite," and another "The Emporium." There were hundreds of squalid booth-like structures besides, where a host of curious things were for sale to the hordes of big-fisted, deep-chested men who were brought there to build the cantonment. But they tell me that the civilian camp is fast breaking up now, for the cantonment is almost completed. The remount stables for the artillery, the refrigerating plant and the huge bakery are all that remain to be built and the labourers are leaving in big groups.

The temporary bakery (I pa.s.sed it to-night on my way back to camp) is represented by a double line of tents, before each of which is a big field baking oven, its coal fire glowing from lower doors like huge, red eyes and its gaunt smoke-stack reaching upward to terminate in a cloud of black smoke which ascends higher and higher in long, graceful spirals until it is lost in the darkness of the night.

Before these ovens work the bakers, in khaki, of course, but each swathed in a flowing white ap.r.o.n. With sleeves rolled up and shirts opened at the throat, they wield their long bakers' paddles, and as they pa.s.s to and fro in the dull red firelight, they look elfish and grotesque; exactly like a lot of gnome bakers off in the "nowheres"

baking bread for some ferocious ogre who bids them work incessantly.

And these loaves they bake are indeed loaves for ogres; huge affairs two feet long and as big 'round their rich brown girth as pumpkins. In "sheets" of a dozen each they are brought from the fire and placed steaming hot on a nearby table where an expert breaks them apart and tests the tenderness of their fibre and searches for signs of doughiness. These bakers are all of the Regular Army now, but not long since czars of dingy cellar bakeries located anywhere from Boston to San Francisco. But the ogre has called them together and here like gnomes they work, eight hours each in three shifts and the oven fires are kept burning always.

Still we drill, drill, drill. This morning was spent in manuvring and tramping over the wet and soggy countryside in company formation, and this afternoon, by way of variety, we were given a few hours fatigue duty in the line of uprooting more stumps and gnarled tentacles, that seem to have rooted themselves in China. But our hands are hard and leathery now and our muscles no longer creak and pain under the stress.

I've added four pounds to my former weight and I have never felt more fit in my life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: They seemed to have rooted themselves in China]

Tuesday:

The cost of high living here is enormous. The stoop-shouldered, shrewd-eyed, flinty-hearted Yankee clerks behind the broad counters of the "Post Exchange" disdain anything less than a quarter. Dimes and nickels are chicken-feed, and pennies-impossible. If a chap buys one apple at five cents or one pear or one banana (always green and a long way from being ripe) he has to hide himself in the crowd to escape the baleful eye of these grasping sharks. Five cent crackers sell two boxes for a quarter, penny candies are five cents each, cigars and cigarettes are considerably above normal in price and considerably below in quality, and ice cream sells for ten cents a gram.

But none of us has grown up. We are all like big boys and we spend with no thought of to-morrow. Mess over, we all hie out to the two main roads that lead to the "Post Exchange," jingling coins in our trouser pockets.

The "Exchange" itself is a long, low unpainted building like all other buildings here with tiny back country windows, half-obscured by garments hanging within which leave only a few dirty squares for the dull yellow light to show through.

The doors are broad and through them streams a never ending line of troopers, some coming, some going. Inside, the place resembles nothing more than a huge up-country general store with shelves upon shelves stacked high with cracker boxes, shoe boxes, hardware and goodness only knows what not, while from the rafters hang heavy coats, sweaters, lanterns, huge stalks of green bananas, hams, bacon, boots and a lot of useless things that only gullible soldiers who feel a yearning to spend their money really purchase. But this spending of money somehow seems to bring us closer to civilization for the moment and we join the churning ma.s.s of men within, whose hobnailed shoes produce a great pounding and sc.r.a.ping sound and whose voices are raised in a constant babble of conversation which only the sharp ting, ting of the cash register bells can punctuate.

We mill around with the crowd, and soon are pushed against a counter.

Something attracts our eye. We feel a desire to possess it. We buy it, and start milling about the room again until presently we are near the door. Then we step out into the night again and join one of the groups of loiterers or sit about on boxes and piles of lumber, where we devour our purchase, if it happens to be in the line of crackers (which is usually the case), or admire it, if it happens to be a pocket flash lamp, a fountain pen or something else that we really never have had any use for.

The small-town idea prevails even in the city of thirty thousand lonesome men. The "Post Exchange" and the "Post Office" are the two centres of interest. First we wander to one, and then we wander to the other, then with time on our hands we join the stream of men going up one side of the road "just walkin'" and when we reach the point where most of the crowd turns back, we turn back, too, and continue our "walkin'," with no particular place to go, until the streets begin to get deserted and it is time for the town to close up. Then we disappear, too, and for an hour occupy ourselves in the barracks until taps are sounded and lights are out, when we go to bed; the place I'm headed for now, so soon as I put the top on my fountain pen.

Wednesday: