“Ain't no harm in havin' a little fun. Don't mean nothin',” he said aloud.
“You just wait till we hit France. We'll hit it up some with the Madimerzels, won't we, kid?” said Bill Grey, slapping Fuselli on the knee.
“Beautiful Katy, Ki-Ki-Katy, You're the only gugugu-girl that I adore; And when the mo-moon shines Over the cowshed, I'll be waiting at the ki-ki-ki-kitchen door.”
Everybody sang as the thumping of wheels over rails grew faster. Fuselli looked about contentedly at the company sprawling over their packs and equipment in the smoky car.
“It's great to be a soldier,” he said to Bill Grey. “Ye kin do anything ye goddam please.”
“This,” said the corporal, as the company filed into barracks identical to those they had left two days before, “is an embarkation camp, but I'd like to know where the hell we embark at.” He twisted his face into a smile, and then shouted with lugubrious intonation: “Fall in for mess.”
It was pitch dark in that part of the camp. The electric lights had a sparse reddish glow. Fuselli kept straining his eyes, expecting to see a wharf and the masts of a ship at the end of every alley. The line filed into a dim mess hall, where a thin stew was splashed into the mess kits. Behind the counter of the kitchen the non-coms, the jovial first sergeant, and the businesslike sergeant who looked like a preacher, and the wrinkled-faced corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield, could be seen eating steak. A faint odor of steak frying went through the mess hall and made the thin chilly stew utterly tasteless in comparison.
Fuselli looked enviously towards the kitchen and thought of the day when he would be a non-com too. “I got to get busy,” he said to himself earnestly. Overseas, under fire, he'd have a chance to show what he was worth; and he pictured himself heroically carrying a wounded captain back to a dressing tent, pursued by fierce-whiskered men with spiked helmets like firemen's helmets.
The strumming of a guitar came strangely down the dark street of the camp.
“Some guy sure can play,” said Bill Grey who, with his hands in his pockets,
Prev.
Back
Top