John Passos - 3 books to know World War I

They lay down on the grassy bank that sloped from the road to the pond. The road was hidden from them by the tall reeds through which the wind lisped softly. Overhead huge white cumulus clouds, piled tier on tier like fantastic galleons in full sail, floated, changing slowly in a greenish sky. The reflection of clouds in the silvery glisten of the pond's surface was broken by clumps of grasses and bits of floating weeds. They lay on their backs for some time before they started taking their clothes off, looking up at the sky, that seemed vast and free, like the ocean, vaster and freer than the ocean.

“Sarge says a delousin' machine's comin' through this way soon.”

“We need it, Chris.”

Andrews pulled his clothes off slowly.

“It's great to feel the sun and the wind on your body, isn't it, Chris?”

Andrews walked towards the pond and lay flat on his belly on the fine soft grass near the edge.

“It's great to have your body there, isn't it?” he said in a dreamy voice. “Your skin's so soft and supple, and nothing in the world has the feel a muscle has.... Gee, I don't know what I'd do without my body.”

Chrisfield laughed.

“Look how ma ole ankle's raised.... Found any cooties yet?” he said.

“I'll try and drown 'em,” said Andrews. “Chris, come away from those stinking uniforms and you'll feel like a human being with the sun on your flesh instead of like a lousy soldier.”

“Hello, boys,” came a high-pitched voice unexpectedly. A “Y” man with sharp nose and chin had come up behind them.

“Hello,” said Chrisfield sullenly, limping towards the water.

“Want the soap?” said Andrews.

“Going to take a swim, boys?” asked the “Y” man. Then he added in a tone of conviction, “That's great.”

“Better come in, too,” said Andrews.

“Thanks, thanks.... Say, if you don't mind my suggestion, why don't you fellers get under the water.... You see there's two French girls looking at you from the road.” The “Y” man giggled faintly.

“They don't mind,” said Andrews soaping, himself vigorously.

“Ah reckon they lahk it,” said Chrisfield.

“I know they haven't any morals.... But still.”

“And why should they not look at us? Maybe there won't be many people who get a chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever seen what a little splinter of a shell does to a feller's body?” asked Andrews savagely. He splashed into the shallow water and swam towards the middle of the pond.

“Ye might ask 'em to come down and help us pick the cooties off,” said Chrisfield and followed in Andrews's wake. In the middle he lay on a sand bank in the warm shallow water and looked back at the “Y” man, who still stood on the bank. Behind him were other men undressing, and soon the grassy slope was filled with naked men and yellowish grey underclothes, and many dark heads and gleaming backs were bobbing up and down in the water. When he came out, he found Andrews sitting cross-legged near his clothes. He reached for his shirt and drew it on him.

“God, I can't make up my mind to put the damn thing on again,” said Andrews in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself; “I feel so clean and free. It's like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again.... I think I'll just walk off naked across the fields.”

“D'you call serving your country slavery, my friend?” The “Y” man, who had been roaming among the bathers, his neat uniform and well-polished boots and puttees contrasting strangely with the mud-clotted, sweat-soaked clothing of the men about him, sat down on the grass beside Andrews.

“You're goddam right I do.”

“You'll get into trouble, my boy, if you talk that way,” said the “Y” man in a cautious voice.

“Well, what is your definition of slavery?”

“You must remember that you are a voluntary worker in the cause of democracy.... You're doing this so that your children will be able to live peaceful....”

“Ever shot a man?”

“No.... No, of course not, but I'd have enlisted, really I would. Only my eyes are weak.”

“I guess so,” said Andrews under his breath. “Remember that your women folks, your sisters and sweethearts and mothers, are praying for you at this instant.”

“I wish somebody'd pray me into a clean shirt,” said Andrews, starting to get into his clothes. “How long have you been over here?”

“Just three months.” The man's sallow face, with its pinched nose and chin lit up. “But, boys, those three months have been worth all the other years of my min—” he caught himself—“life.... I've heard the great heart of America beat. O boys, never forget that you are in a great Christian undertaking.”

“Come on, Chris, let's beat it.” They left the “Y” man wandering among the men along the bank of the pond, to which the reflection of the greenish silvery sky and the great piled white clouds gave all the free immensity of space. From the road they could still hear his high pitched voice.

“And that's what'll survive you and me,” said Andrews.

“Say, Andy, you sure can talk to them guys,” said Chris admiringly.

“What's the use of talking? God, there's a bit of honeysuckle still in bloom. Doesn't that smell like home to you, Chris?”

“Say, how much do they pay those 'Y' men, Andy?”

“Damned if I know.”

They were just in time to fall into line for mess. In the line everyone was talking and laughing, enlivened by the smell of food and the tinkle of mess-kits. Near the field kitchen Chrisfield saw Sergeant Anderson talking with Higgins, his own sergeant. They were laughing together, and he heard Anderson's big voice saying jovially, “We've pulled through this time, Higgins.... I guess we will again.” The two sergeants looked at each other and cast a paternal, condescending glance over their men and laughed aloud.

Chrisfield felt powerless as an ox under the yoke. All he could do was work and strain and stand at attention, while that white-faced Anderson could lounge about as if he owned the earth and laugh importantly like that. He held out his plate. The K.P. splashed the meat and gravy into it. He leaned against the tar-papered wall of the shack, eating his food and looking sullenly over at the two sergeants, who laughed and talked with an air of leisure while the men of their two companies ate hurriedly as dogs all round them.

Chrisfield glanced suddenly at Anderson, who sat in the grass at the back of the house, looking out over the wheat fields, while the smoke of a cigarette rose in spirals about his face and his fair hair. He looked peaceful, almost happy. Chrisfield clenched his fists and felt the hatred of that other man rising stingingly within him.

“Guess Ah got a bit of the devil in me,” he thought.

The windows were so near the grass that the faint light had a greenish color in the shack where the company was quartered. It gave men's faces, tanned as they were, the sickly look of people who work in offices, when they lay on their blankets in the bunks made of chicken wire, stretched across mouldy scantlings. Swallows had made their nests in the peak of the roof, and their droppings made white dobs and blotches on the floorboards in the alley between the bunks, where a few patches of yellow grass had not yet been completely crushed away by footsteps. Now that the shack was empty, Chrisfield could hear plainly the peep-peep of the little swallows in their mud nests. He sat quiet on the end of one of the bunks, looking out of the open door at the blue shadows that were beginning to lengthen on the grass of the meadow behind. His hands, that had got to be the color of terra cotta, hung idly between his legs. He was whistling faintly. His eyes, in their long black eyelashes, were fixed on the distance, though he was not thinking. He felt a comfortable unexpressed well-being all over him. It was pleasant to be alone in the barracks like this, when the other men were out at grenade practice. There was no chance of anyone shouting orders at him.