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Updated: May 18, 2025
Will they let themselves be driven to the slaughter always?" "O I don't know." Eisenstein got to his feet. "We'd better be getting to barracks. Coming, Fuselli?" he said. "Guess so," said Fuselli indifferently, without getting up. Eisenstein and the Frenchman went out into the shop. "Bon swar," said Fuselli, softly, leaning across the table. "Hey, girlie?"
An idea that he repelled came into his mind. The corporal didn't look strong. He wouldn't last long overseas. And he pictured Mabe writing Corporal Dan Fuselli, O.A.R.D.5. At the end of the afternoon, the lieutenant appeared suddenly, his face flushed, his trench coat stiffer than ever. "All right, sergeant; line up your men," he said in a breathless voice.
Oh, he wanted so hard to be promoted. It'd be so swell if he could write back to Mabe and tell her to address her letters Corporal Dan Fuselli. He must be more careful not to do anything that would get him in wrong with anybody. He must never miss an opportunity to show them what a clever kid he was.
Fuselli walked back slowly to the tents where the Company was quartered, looking about him at the long lines of barracks, gaunt and dripping in the mist, at the big tin sheds of the cook shacks where the cooks and K. P.'s in greasy blue denims were slouching about amid a steam of cooking food. Something of the gesture with which the lieutenant drew on his gloves caught in the mind of Fuselli.
"Yer right not to go with any of the girls in this goddam town.... They ain't clean, none of 'em.... That is if ye want to go overseas." The flaxen-haired youth leaned across the table earnestly. "I'm goin' to git some more chow: Wait for me, will yer?" said Fuselli. "What yer going to do down town?" asked the flaxen-haired youth when Fuselli came back.
"Hep, hep, hep," cried the sergeant, glaring down the ranks, with his aggressive bulldog expression, to where someone had fallen out of step. The company stood at attention in the dusk. Fuselli was biting the inside of his lips with impatience. Minutes at last, as if reluctantly, the sergeant sang out: "Dis...missed."
In Fuselli's company the men were shifting their weight from one foot to the other, muttering, "What the hell a' they waiting for now?" Bill Grey, next to Fuselli in the ranks, stood bent double so as to take the weight of his pack off his shoulders.
"Don't you find K.P. work pretty damn dull?" "No worse than anything else. What are you doin" in Paris?" "School detachment." "What's that?" "Men who wanted to study in the university, who managed to work it." "Gee, I'm glad I ain't goin' to school again." "Well, so long, Fuselli." "So long, Andrews." Fuselli turned and slouched back to the group of men at the door. Andrews hurried away.
The moonlight glittered in the fountain at the end of the main square of the town. It was a warm dark night of faint clouds through which the moon shone palely as through a thin silk canopy. Fuselli stood by the fountain smoking a cigarette, looking at the yellow windows of the Cheval Blanc at the other end of the square, from which came a sound of voices and of billiard balls clinking.
"Well, there are bad eggs in every good bunch," thought Fuselli. It gradually grew grey with dawn. Fuselli's legs were tired from standing so long. Outside all the barracks, as far as he could see up the street, men stood in ragged lines waiting. The sun rose hot on a cloudless day. A few sparrows twittered about the tin roof of the barracks. "Hell, we're not goin' this day."
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