Great American Dog Stories by Nancy Butler
Author:Nancy Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2020-12-28T00:00:00+00:00
BRUCE
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
Editorâs Note: Although this story is set in the trenches of France in WW I, the editors feel it still qualifies as a North American story. The soldiers involved are in an American regiment.
âYes, itâs an easy enough trade to pick up,â lectured Top Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army. âYouâve just got to remember a few things. But youâve got to keep on remembering those few, all the time. If you forget one of âem, itâs the last bit of forgetting youâre ever likely to do.â
Top Sergeant Mahan, of the mixed French-and-American regiment known as âHere We Come,â was squatting at ease on the trench firing-step. From that professorial seat he was dispensing useful knowledge to a group of fellow-countrymenânewly arrived from the base, to pad the âHere-We-Comeâ ranks, which had been thinned at the Rache attack.
âWhat sort of things have we got to remember, Sergeant?â jauntily asked a lanky Missourian. âWeâve got the drill pretty pat; and the trench instructions andâââ
âGee!â ejaculated Mahan. âI had no idea of that! Then why donât you walk straight ahead into Berlin? If you know all you say you do, about war, thereâs nothing more for you to learn. Iâll drop a line to General Foch and suggest to him that you rookies be detailed to teach the game to us oldsters.â
âI didnât mean to be fresh,â apologized the jaunty one. âWonât you go ahead and tell us the things we need to remember?â
âWell,â exhorted Mahan, appeased by the newcomerâs humility, âthere arenât so many of them, after all. Learn to duck, when you hear a Minnie grunt or a whizz-bang cut loose; or a five-nine begin to whimper. Learn not to bother to duck when the rifles get to jabberingâfor youâll never hear the bullet that gets you. Study the nocturnal habits of machine-guns and the ways of snipers and the right time not to play the fool. And keep saying to yourself: âThe bullet ainât molded that can get me!â Mean it when you say it. When youâve learned those few things, the rest of the war-game is dead easy.â
âExcept,â timidly amended old Sergeant Vivier, the gray little Frenchman, âexcept when eyes areâare what you call it, no use.â
âThatâs right,â assented Mahan. âIn the times when eyes are no use, all rules fail. And then the only thing you can do is to trust to your Yankee luck. I rememberââ
ââWhen eyes are no useâ?â repeated the recruit. âIf you mean after dark, at nightâhavenât we got the searchlights and the starshells and all that?â
âSon,â replied Mahan, âwe have. Though I donât see how you ever guessed such an important secret. But since you know everything, maybe youâll just kindly tell us what good all the lights in the world are going to do us when the filthy yellow-gray fog begins to ooze up out of the mud and the shell-holes, and the filthy gray mist oozes down from the clouds to meet it. Fog is the one thing that all the war-science wonât overcome.
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