Three Soldiers

n the army diet managed to keep a faint odour of garlic about him, three soldiers in

sses.... Inspection in twenty

give a damn. If we don't pass inspection, I get hell-not you. Pl

he leant over he found himself looking into the dark-brown eyes of the soldier who was working bes

army to be ordered around by

nd by, you're ordered around just the same,"

rk. My folks are from V

ntry.... Git to work; here's that ba

t-a-way; sweep 'em up,

oom and a shovel collecting chewed-out quids of

hn's Chrisfield. Folk

drews, Joh

ook sick an' died last summer. How long d'ye

I don'

ee that count

u d

't y

bet I

corporal waddling about importantly on his bandy legs. He kept looking down the row of barracks

e brought his hand up to the brim of his hat. A group

mptying the garbage pails, went

the other end. He made his neck

ame the hard clank of the hee

's eyes. He stared straight before him noting the few reddish hairs on th

s man?" came a voice

recruit, sir. Corporal V

said the Italian corporal with a

ectly, speaking fast and loud. "H

week,

n and shaved and ready for inspecti

ning the ba

ye at his superior and noticed the major was frowning. His tone changed ever so slightly. "If this ever occurs again you may be sure that disciplinary action will be taken....

his arms stretched wide in front of the movie screen. The piano

, the gang'

g to get t

g to get t

g to get t

o

ang with thei

his lean face into a

man and sing 'What the hell do we care?' Bu

little rattl

"and lots of guts in the get and lots of

f little exclamations passed over them. They were all so alike, they seemed at moments to be but one organism. This was what he had sought when he had enlisted, he said to himself. It was in this that he would take refuge from the horror of the world that had fallen upon him. He was sick of revolt, of thought, of carrying his individuality like a ba

to him with a smile that drove his anger

e out in Frisco," said the man on the other si

borately in the intermission bet

hn Andrews, putting an arm round his

rom Fr

ar

ast, this feller's from New York, an' Ah

ompany

This feller an

a place.... Say, m

s Chri

's An

e a feller to git

be you'll get into our company. They transferred a lot of men out the ot

gh, but Ah want

. Picturesque, they call it. And the people wears peasant costumes....

e's t

He's an

does it take to

or two," s

troops were pictured advancing, bayonetting the civilians in wide Dutch pants, the old women with starched caps, the soldiers packed into the stuffy Y. M. C. A. hut shouted oaths at them. Andrews felt blind hatred stirring like something that had a life of its own in the

a tight stream of soldiers moving towa

by God, I'm going to. I'd give a lot to

ldren. They're either jackasses or full of the lust for power like their r

ma boots an' then shoot him dead," said Chris to Andrews

wou

went on Chris intensely. "Don't stay far from here either

's t

ill yesterday. He seems to think that just because Ah'm

ss of the boy's tone startled him. He was not accustomed to this. He had thought of

lly want t

eases me. Ah pulled ma knife on him yisterday. You wasn't

how old are

ou're older tha

twent

all of their barracks, looking

same over there, over

ews, laughing. "Though

hool when I was twelve, 'cause it warn't much good, an'

ow in your part

we raised a lot o' stock.... But Ah was juss

me abo

ller Ah'd been right smart friends with. Then he laid off an' hit me in the jaw. Ah don't know what Ah done next, but before Ah knowed it Ah had a hold of a shuck-in' knife and was slashin' at him with it. A knife like that's a turruble thing to stab a man with. It took four of 'em to hold me down an' git it away from me. They d

overseas, Chris, like me," sa

," said Chrisfield laughing; but he added after a pause: "It would have been he

at pays, a violini

who sat doubled up with his long face in his hands and his elbows

with here and there a man asleep or a man hastily undressing, stretched, lighted by o

ked a man with a brogue, and the red face of

I am," said the l

luck?" came a voi

he faces about him out of sunken eyes. "I ought to be getting forty

were gettin' out o

democratic army," chanted

t the 'uns," said Flannagan, who managed with strange

gone an' studied overseas, I'd be making as much a

drews, who stood on the outs

t. b.," said

me over there soon e

and what folks say. They say 'we' over t

erstand an Irishman anywhere. But ye won't 'ave to talk to the 'uns. Be

ody la

'll be O'Casey and O'Ryan and O'Reilly and O'Flarrety, and begod the K

a telephone pole by that time

death, like they do niggers wh

e on the parade ground. Everyon

not lose entirely the thread of his own life, of the life he would take up again some day if he lived through it. He brushed away the thought of death. It was uninteresting. He didn't care

the utterest degradation of slavery, he could find forgetfulness and start rebuilding the fabric of his life, out of real things this time, out of work and comradeship and scorn. Scorn-that was the quality he needed. It was such a raw, fantastic world he had sud

a afternoons, thinking, while the dryflies whizzed sleepily in the sunlight, of the world he would live in when he grew up. He had planned so many lives for himself: a general, like Caesar, he was to conquer the world and die murdered in a great marble hall; a wandering minstrel, he would go through all countries singing and have intricate

s romantic world, so full of many colors and harmonies, that had survived school and college and the buffeting of making a living in New York, had fallen in dust abou

my life. They did not seem appalled by the loss of their liberty. But they had never lived in the glittering other world.

, the gang'

g to get t

g to get t

g to get t

o

tion? Was this all futile madness? They'd come from such various worlds, all these men sleeping about him, to be united in this. And what di

owers flutter down into the dry grass, and felt, again, wrapped in his warm blankets among all these sleepers, the strai

art. The bugle wa

ly!" the sergeant was