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Updated: May 8, 2025
"You see, I said I would not kill any more and I will not and I was shot and got tagged without even being shipped as freight. I was thirsty last night, very thirsty, and some one I think it was Jake Pilzer some one said to go to the fountain of hell for a drink, but I I don't think that a very good place to get a drink, do you?"
"But I don't think you ought to joke about the flag That's sacred!" declared Eugene. "Now you're talking!" said Jacob Pilzer, the butcher's son, who sat on the other side of the bench from Eugene. He was heavily built, with an undershot jaw and a patch of liverish birthmark on his cheek. "Yes," piped Peterkin, who had an opinion when the two strong men of the company agreed on any subject.
Bullets glide off him!" snarled Pilzer, who had set out to win a bronze cross, only to see it won by a pygmy. "Did you see many dead and wounded?" persisted the very tired voice of the old reservist. "Yes, yes and every kind of destruction!" answered the judge's son. "And I kept thinking of Hugo Mallin." "I'm glad they didn't shoot Hugo," said the very tired voice.
"As if I didn't know that!" grumbled Pilzer. "The enemy seems to be always ready for us, anyway," he added. "The chief of staff stopped the letters because he said that mothers who received none took it for granted that their sons were dead," explained the judge's son. "Besides, he asserts that casualties are not heavy and asks for patience in the name of patriotism."
The thinner the veneer of civilized habit, the more easily the animal, always waiting and craving war, breaks through. And the animal was strong in Jacob Pilzer, the butcher's son. He had a bull's heart and lacked the little tendrils of sensibility whose writhing would tire him. Hugo Mallin had these tendrils by the thousand.
Occasionally came a sob from a man gone hysterical under the strain, a moan of mental misery; and once a laugh, a strange, hiccoughy, delirious laugh, a strident attempt at the wit that keeps up courage; and from Pilzer, the butcher's son, a string of oaths mixed with brimstone and obscenity. After each outbreak an automatic, irritable whisper for silence came from an officer.
He had so many that they gave him a reserve physical endurance like a kind of intoxication. He felt as if he had been drinking some noxious, foamy wine which made his mind singularly keen to every impression. Therefore he and Pilzer alone of Fracasse's company were not utterly fatigued.
The bronze cross desired of generals and privates for Peterkin, when Pilzer had been so confident that he should win the first that came to the 128th now that Eugene Aronson was dead! "I I " stammered Peterkin. "And so modest about it!" added the colonel. "Remembered the lectures to recruits and acted on them faithfully!" The old spirit of the nation was not dead.
But the breathing of most of the men was not that of slumber, though Eugene and Pilzer slept soundly. Hours passed. Occasional restless movements told of efforts to force sleep by changing position. "It's the waiting that's sickening!" exploded the manufacturer's son under his breath, desperately. "So I say. I'd like to be at it and done with the suspense!" said the doctor's son.
We have heard nothing of Jacob Pilzer, the butcher's son, and Peterkin, the valet's son, and others of Fracasse's company of the 128th of the Grays since Hugo Mallin threw down his rifle when they were firing on scattered Brown soldiers in retreat.
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