John Passos - 1919

“You see, General,” shouted Mr. Cooper, “he feels he wants some more… er… responsible work than was possible in the ambulance service.”

“Yessiree, no place for a highspirited young fellow…. You know Andrews, Major…” The General was scribbling on a pad. “Take him to see Colonel Andrews with this memorandum and he’ll fix him up, has to decide on qualifications etc…. You understand… good luck, my boy.” Dick managed a passable salute and they were out in the corridor; Mr. Cooper was smiling broadly. “Well, that’s done. I must be getting back to my office. You go and fill out the forms and take your medical examination… or perhaps that’ll be at the camp… Anyway come and lunch with me at the Willard at one. Come up to the room.” Dick saluted smiling.

He spent the rest of the morning filling out blanks. After lunch he went down to Atlantic City to see his mother. She looked just the same. She was staying in a boarding house at the Chelsea end and was very much exercised about spies. Henry had enlisted as a private in the infantry and was somewhere in France. Mother said it made her blood boil to think of the grandson of General Ellsworth being a mere private, but that she felt confident he’d soon rise from the ranks. Dick hadn’t heard her speak of her father since she used to talk about him when he was a child, and asked her about him. He had died when she was quite a little girl leaving the family not too well off considering their station in life. All she remembered was a tall man in blue with a floppy felt hat caught up on one side and a white goatee; when she’d first seen a cartoon of Uncle Sam she’d thought it was her father. He always had hoarhound drops in a little silver bonbonnière in his pocket, she’d been so excited about the military funeral and a nice kind army officer giving her his handkerchief. She’d kept the bonbonnière for many years but it had had to go with everything else when your poor father… er… failed.

A week later Dick received a war department envelope addressed to Savage, Richard Ellsworth, 2nd Lieut. Ord. Dept., enclosing his commission and ordering him to proceed to Camp Merritt, N.J., within 24 hours. Dick found himself in charge of a casuals company at Camp Merritt and wouldn’t have known what on earth to do if it hadn’t been for the sergeant. Once they were on the transport it was better; he had what had been a first class cabin with two other 2nd Lieutenants and a Major; Dick had the drop on them all because he’d been at the front. The transport was the Leviathan ; Dick began to feel himself again when he saw the last of Sandy Hook; he wrote Ned a long letter in doggerel that began:

His father was a jailbird and his mother had no kale

He was much too fond of cognac and he drank it by the pail

But now he’s a Second Lieut and supported by the State.

Sports a handsome uniform and a military gait

And this is the most terrific fate that ever can befall

A boy whose grandpa was a Major-General.

The other two shavetails in the cabin were nondescript youngsters from Leland Stanford, but Major Thompson was a Westpointer and stiff as a ramrod. He was a middleaged man with a yellow round face, thin lips and noseglasses. Dick thawed him out a little by getting him a pint of whiskey through his sergeant who’d gotten chummy with the stewards, when he got seasick two days out, and discovered that he was a passionate admirer of Kipling and had heard Copeland read Danny Deever and been very much impressed. Furthermore he was an expert on mules and horseflesh and the author of a monograph: The Spanish Horse. Dick admitted that he’d studied with Copeland and somehow it came out that he was the grandson of the late General Ellsworth. Major Thompson began to take an interest in him and to ask him questions about the donkeys the French used to carry ammunition in the trenches, Italian cavalry horses and the works of Rudyard Kipling. The night before they reached Brest when everybody was flustered and the decks were all dark and silent for the zone, Dick went into a toilet and reread the long kidding letter he’d written Ned first day out. He tore it up into small bits, dropped them in the can and then flushed it carefully: no more letters.

In Brest Dick took three majors downtown and ordered them a meal and good wine at the hotel; during the evening Major Thompson told stories about the Philippines and the Spanish war; after the fourth bottle Dick taught them all to sing Mademoiselle from Armentiéres. A few days later he was detached from his casuals company and set to Tours; Major Thompson, who felt he needed somebody to speak French for him and to talk about Kipling with, had gotten him transferred to his office. It was a relief to see the last of Brest, where everybody was in a continual grouch from the drizzle and the mud and the discipline and the saluting and the formations and the fear of getting in wrong with the brasshats.

Tours was full of lovely creamystone buildings buried in dense masses of bluegreen late summer foliage. Dick was on commutation of rations and boarded with an agreeable old woman who brought him up his café au lait in bed every morning. He got to know a fellow in the Personnel Department through whom he began to work to get Henry transferred out of the infantry. He and Major Thompson and old Colonel Edgecombe and several other offices dined together very often; they got so they couldn’t do without Dick who knew how to order a meal comme il faut, and the proper vintages of wines and could parleyvoo with the French girls and make up limericks and was the grandson of the late General Ellsworth.

When the Post Despatch Service was organized as a separate outfit, Colonel Edgecombe who headed it, got him away from Major Thompson and his horsedealers; Dick became one of his assistants with the rank of Captain. Immediately he managed to get Henry transferred from the officers’ school to Tours. It was too late though to get him more than a first lieutenancy.

When Lieutenant Savage reported to Captain Savage in his office he looked brown and skinny and sore. That evening they drank a bottle of white wine together in Dick’s room. The first thing Henry said when the door closed behind them was, “Well, of all the goddam lousy grafts… I don’t know whether to be proud of the little kid brother or to sock him in the eye.”

Dick poured him a drink. “It must have been Mother’s doing,” he said. “Honestly, I’d forgotten that granpa was a general.”

“If you knew what us guys at the front used to say about the S.O.S.”

“But somebody’s got to handle the supplies and the ordnance and…”

“And the mademosels and the vin blanc,” broke in Henry.

“Sure, but I’ve been very virtuous… Your little brother’s minding his p’s and q’s, and honestly I’ve been working like a nigger.”

“Writing loveletters for ordnance majors, I bet…. Hell, you can’t beat it. He lands with his nose in the butter every time…. Anyway I’m glad there’s one successful member of the family to carry on the name of the late General Ellsworth.”

“Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?”

“Lousy… until they sent me back to officers’ school.”

“We had a swell time there in the ambulance service in ’17.”

“Oh, you would.”

Henry drank some more wine and mellowed up a little. Every now and then he’d look around the big room with its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and it’s big fourposter bed and make a popping sound with his lips and mutter: “Pretty soft.” Dick took him out and set him up to a fine dinner at his favorite bistro and then went around and fixed him up with Minette, who was the bestlooking girl at Madame Patou’s.

After Henry had gone upstairs, Dick sat in the parlor a few minutes with a girl they called Dirty Gertie who had hair dyed red and a big floppy painted mouth, drinking the bad cognac and feeling blue. “Vous triste?” she said, and put her clammy hand on his forehead. He nodded. “Fièvre… trop penser… penser no good… moi aussi.” Then she said she’d kill herself but she was afraid, not that she believed in God, but that she was afraid of how quiet it would be after she was dead. Dick cheered her up, “Bientot guerre finee. Tout le monde content go back home.” The girl burst out crying and Madame Patou came running in screaming and clawing like a seagull. She was a heavy woman with an ugly jaw. She grabbed the girl by the hair and began shaking her. Dick was flustered. He managed to make the woman let the girl go back to her room, left some money and walked out. He felt terrible. When he got home he felt like writing some verse. He tried to recapture the sweet and heavy pulsing of feelings he used to have when he sat down to write a poem. But all he could do was just feel miserable so he went to bed. All night half thinking half dreaming he couldn’t get Dirty Gertie’s face out of his head. Then he began remembering the times he used to have with Hilda at Bay Head and had a long conversation with himself about love: Everything’s so hellishly sordid… I’m sick of whores and chastity, I want to have love affairs. He began planning what he’d do after the war, probably go home and get a political job in Jersey; a pretty sordid prospect.