Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos

Author:John Dos Passos [Passos, John Dos]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780395083895
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1920-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Andrews stared for a long while at the line of shields that supported the dark ceiling beams on the wall opposite his cot. The emblems had been erased and the grey stone figures that crowded under the shields,—the satyr with his shaggy goat’s legs, the townsman with his square hat, the warrior with the sword between his legs,—had been clipped and scratched long ago in other wars. In the strong afternoon light they were so dilapidated he could hardly make them out. He wondered how they had seemed so vivid to him when he had lain in his cot, comforted by their comradeship, while his healing wounds itched and tingled. Still he glanced tenderly at the grey stone figures as he left the ward.

Downstairs in the office where the atmosphere was stuffy with a smell of varnish and dusty papers and cigarette smoke, he waited a long time, shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other.

“What do you want?” said a red-haired sergeant, without looking up from the pile of papers on his desk.

“Waiting for travel orders.”

“Aren’t you the guy I told to come back at three?”

“It is three.”

“H’m!” The sergeant kept his eyes fixed on the papers, which rustled as he moved them from one pile to another. In the end of the room a typewriter clicked slowly and jerkily. Andrews could see the dark back of a head between bored shoulders in a woolen shirt leaning over the machine. Beside the cylindrical black stove against the wall a man with large mustaches and the complicated stripes of a hospital sergeant was reading a novel in a red cover. After a long silence the red-headed sergeant looked up from his papers and said suddenly:

“Ted.”

The man at the typewriter turned slowly round, showing a large red face and blue eyes.

“We-ell,” he drawled.

“Go in an’ see if the loot has signed them papers yet.”

The man got up, stretched himself deliberately, and slouched out through a door beside the stove. The red-haired sergeant leaned back in his swivel chair and lit a cigarette.

“Hell,” he said, yawning.

The man with the mustache beside the stove let the book slip from his knees to the floor, and yawned too.

“This goddam armistice sure does take the ambition out of a feller,” he said.

“Hell of a note,” said the red-haired sergeant. “D’you know that they had my name in for an O.T.C.? Hell of a note goin’ home without a Sam Brown.”

The other man came back and sank down into his chair in front of the typewriter again. The slow, jerky clicking recommenced.

Andrews made a scraping noise with his foot on the ground.

“Well, what about that travel order?” said the red-haired sergeant.

“Loot’s out,” said the other man, still typewriting.

“Well, didn’t he leave it on his desk?” shouted the red-haired sergeant angrily.

“Couldn’t find it.”

“I suppose I’ve got to go look for it. … God!” The red-haired sergeant stamped out of the room. A moment later he came back with a bunch of papers in his hand.

“Your name Jones?” he snapped to Andrews.

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