John Passos - One Man's Initiation, 1917

Up the road a sudden column of black smoke rises among falling trees. A louder explosion and the cook waggon in front of them vanishes in a new whirl of thick smoke. Accelerator pressed down, the car plunges along the rutted road, tips, and a wheel sinks in the new shell-hole. The hind wheels spin for a moment, spattering gravel about, and just as another roar comes behind them, bite into the road again and the car goes on, speeding through the alternate sun and shadow of the woods. Martin remembers the beating legs of a mule rolling on its back on the side of the road and, steaming in the fresh morning air, the purple and yellow and red of its ripped belly.

“Did you get the smell of almonds? I sort of like it,” says Randolph, drawing a long breath as the car slowed down again.

The woods at night, fantastic blackness full of noise and yellow leaping flames from the mouths of guns. Now and then the sulphurous flash of a shell explosion and the sound of trees falling and shell fragments swishing through the air. At intervals over a little knoll in the direction of the trenches, a white star-shell falls slowly, making the trees and the guns among their tangle of hiding branches cast long green-black shadows, drowning the wood in a strange glare of desolation.

“Where the devil’s the abri?”

Everything drowned in the detonations of three guns, one after the other, so near as to puff hot air in their faces in the midst of the blinding concussion.

“Look, Tom, this is foolish; the abri’s right here.”

“I haven’t got it in my pocket, Howe. Damn those guns.”

Again everything is crushed in the concussion of the guns.

They throw themselves on the ground as a shell shrieks and explodes. There is a moment’s pause, and gravel and bits of bark tumble about their heads.

“We’ve got to find that abri. I wish I hadn’t lost my flashlight.”

“Here it is! No, that stinks too much. Must be the latrine.”

“Say, Tom.”

“Here.”

“Damn, I ran into a tree. I found it.”

“All right. Coming.”

Martin held out his hand until Randolph bumped into it; then they stumbled together down the rough wooden steps, pulled aside the blanket that served to keep the light in, and found themselves blinking in the low tunnel of the abri.

Brancardiers were asleep in the two tiers of bunks that filled up the sides, and at the table at the end a lieutenant of the medical corps was writing by the light of a smoky lamp.

“They are landing some round here to-night,” he said, pointing out two unoccupied bunks. “I’ll call you when we need a car.”

As he spoke, in succession the three big guns went off. The concussion put the lamp out.

“Damn,” said Tom Randolph.

The lieutenant swore and struck a match.

“The red light of the poste de secours is out, too,” said Martin.

“No use lighting it again with those unholy mortars... It’s idiotic to put a poste de secours in the middle of a battery like this.”

The Americans lay down to try to sleep. Shell after shell exploded round the dugout, but regularly every few minutes came the hammer blows of the mortars, half the time putting the light out.

A shell explosion seemed to split the dugout and a piece of éclat whizzed through the blanket that curtained off the door. Someone tried to pick it up as it lay half-buried in the board floor, and pulled his fingers away quickly, blowing on them. The men turned over in the bunks and laughed, and a smile came over the drawn green face of a wounded man who sat very quiet behind the lieutenant, staring at the smoky flame of the lamp.

The curtain was pulled aside and a man staggered in holding with the other hand a limp arm twisted in a mud-covered sleeve, from which blood and mud dripped on to the floor.

“Hello, old chap,” said the doctor quietly. A smell of disinfectant stole through the dugout.

Faint above the incessant throbbing of explosions, the sound of a claxon horn.

“Ha, gas,” said the doctor. “Put on your masks, children.” A man went along the dugout waking those who were asleep and giving out fresh masks. Someone stood in the doorway blowing a shrill whistle, then there was again the clamour of a claxon near at hand.

The band of the gas mask was tight about Martin’s forehead, biting into the skin.

He and Randolph sat side by side on the edge of the bunk, looking out through the crinkled isinglass eyepieces at the men in the dugout, most of whom had gone to sleep again.

“God, I envy a man who can snore through a gas-mask,” said Randolph.

Men’s heads had a ghoulish look, strange large eyes and grey oilcloth flaps instead of faces.

Outside the constant explosions had given place to a series of swishing whistles, merging together into a sound as of water falling, only less regular, more sibilant. Occasionally there was the rending burst of a shell, and at intervals came the swinging detonations of the three guns. In the dugout, except for two men who snored loudly, raspingly, everyone was quiet.

Several stretchers with wounded men on them were brought in and laid in the end of the dugout.

Gradually, as the bombardment continued, men began sliding into the dugout, crowding together, touching each other for company, speaking in low voices through their masks.

“A mask, in the name of God, a mask!” a voice shouted, breaking into a squeal, and an unshaven man, with mud caked in his hair and beard, burst through the curtain. His eyelids kept up a continual trembling and the water streamed down both sides of his nose.

“O God,” he kept talking in a rasping whisper, “O God, they’re all killed. There were six mules on my waggon and a shell killed them all and threw me into the ditch. You can’t find the road any more. They’re all killed.”

An orderly was wiping his face as if it were a child’s.

“They’re all killed and I lost my mask... O God, this gas ...”

The doctor, a short man, looking like a gnome in his mask with its wheezing rubber nosepiece, was walking up and down with short, slow steps.

Suddenly, as three soldiers came in, drawing the curtain aside, he shouted in a shrill, high-pitched voice:

“Keep the curtain closed! Do you want to asphyxiate us?”

He strode up to the newcomers, his voice strident like an angry woman’s. “What are you doing here? This is the poste de secours. Are you wounded?”

“But, my lieutenant, we can’t stay outside ...”

“Where’s your own cantonment? You can’t stay here; you can’t stay here,” he shrieked.

“But, my lieutenant, our dugout’s been hit.”

“You can’t stay here. You can’t stay here. There’s not enough room for the wounded. Name of God!”

“But, my lieutenant ...”

“Get the hell out of here, d’you hear?”

The men began stumbling out into the darkness, tightening the adjustments of their masks behind their heads.

The guns had stopped firing. There was nothing but the constant swishing and whistling of gas-shells, like endless pails of dirty water being thrown on gravel.

“We’ve been at it three hours,” whispered Martin to Tom Randolph.

“God, suppose these masks need changing.”

The sweat from Martin’s face steamed in the eyepieces, blinding him.

“Any more masks?” he asked.

A brancardier handed him one. “There aren’t any more in the abri.”

“I have some more in the car,” said Martin.

“I’ll get one,” cried Randolph, getting to his feet.

They started out of the door together. In the light that streamed out as they drew the flap aside they saw a tree opposite them. A shell exploded, it seemed, right on top of them; the tree rose and bowed towards them and fell.