“We’ve got a lot to learn,” sighed Roger. “All I can see to do is to get busy and learn it. I’ve been trying to look as much like a first-class private as I could since I drew my uniform. Jimmy has us all beaten when it comes to that, though. His uniform blouse looks as though it grew on him.”
Jimmy appeared radiantly pleased at Bob’s candid praise. Unconsciously he drew himself up with a proud little air that was vastly becoming to him. “Oh, I’m not so much,” he demurred.
“Don’t let it go to your head and swell it, Blazes,” teased Bob. “Look at me and think what you might have been. To-night you see before you a simple, hopeful rookie. To-morrow at drill you’ll see a sore and hopeless dub. I expect to get mine; but not forever. Live and learn. If you can’t learn you’ve got a right to live, anyhow. A few gentle reminders from a drill sergeant that you’re a dummy won’t put you in the family vault. A little mild abuse’ll seem like home to me. I’ll think I’m back on the Chronicle listening to the city editor. It takes a newspaper man to read the riot act to a cub reporter. Nothing left out and several clauses added.”
Bob’s untroubled attitude toward what lay in wait for him on the morrow had a cheering effect on Jimmy and Roger. Ignace, however, sat humped up on his cot a veritable statue of melancholy. Decidedly round-shouldered, his stocky figure showed at a glaring disadvantage in the trim olive-drab Army-blouse.
Jimmy’s glance coming to rest on the dejected one, he counseled warningly: “You’d better practice holding back your shoulders, Iggy. They need it.”
Ignace obediently straightened up. “Too much mill,” he explained. “All time so.” He illustrated by bending far forward. “Mebbe better soon. Huh?”
“You’ll have to keep on the job all the while, then,” was Jimmy’s blunt assertion.
“So will I.” Ignace sighed, then braced himself upon the edge of his cot to a position of ramrod stiffness that was laughable, yet somehow pathetic. Occupied with the ordeal, he took small part in the low-toned talk that continued among his Brothers, but sat blinking at them, now and then slumping briefly and recovering himself with a jerk. Shortly before the 9:45 call to quarters sounded, he dropped over on his cot and went fast asleep. Sound of the bugle brought him to his feet with a wild leap and a snort that nearly convulsed his comrades, and brought the eyes of a dozen or more of rookies to bear upon him. Among them was a tall, freckle-faced, pale-eyed youth with a sneering mouth, who bunked directly across the aisle from the four Khaki Boys.
Viewing Ignace with a grin of malicious amusement, he addressed a remark to his nearest neighbors that caused them to burst into jeering laughter. Quick to catch its scornful import, Jimmy shot an angry glance across the room. Beyond an occasional cursory survey of his rookie companions of the barrack, he had paid them small attention. Now in his usual impetuous fashion he conceived an instant dislike for the freckle-faced soldier, which he never had reason to change. For a second the two stared steadily at each other. Across the narrow space sped a silent declaration of war to the knife. Had Jimmy been gifted with the ability to read the future, he would have been considerably amazed to learn what the outcome of that mute declaration was destined to be.
CHAPTER V
THE BEAUTY OF GOOD ADVICE
During the first three days in camp the four Khaki Boys could not get over the awkward feeling of having been suddenly set down in the midst of a strange and confused world. Taken out for drill on the second morning after their arrival at Camp Sterling, their first encounter with a drill sergeant did not tend to make them feel strictly at home in the Army. It served, instead, to bring out sharply to them a deep conviction of their own imperfections.
Greatly to their secret disappointment, they were not all assigned to the same squad. Bob and Roger were placed in one squad, Ignace and Jimmy in another. Of the four, Jimmy Blaise acquitted himself with the most credit. Blessed with a naturally fine carriage, lithe of movement and quick of perception, he showed every promise of becoming a success as a soldier. Undoubtedly his previous, though amateur training, now stood him in good stead. Added to that was a genuine enthusiasm for things military.
Schooled in the work-a-day world, Roger and Bob were also of excellent material. Both had learned to move quickly and obey promptly. Roger’s chief assets were earnestness of purpose and absolute dependability. Less earnest and more inclined to whimsicality, Bob was possessed of an alertness of brain that enabled him to comprehend instantly whatever was required of him. So the two were fairly well-matched and needed practice only in order to develop and bring out their latent soldierly qualities.
Poor Ignace alone seemed determined to cover himself with confusion. Drilled in the same squad with Jimmy, he was from the start a severe trial to the efficient, but hot-headed young sergeant in charge. Slow to think and slower to act, he immediately became a mark for criticism. His awkward carriage and shuffling walk were an eye-sore to that trim, capable officer.
During the first day’s drilling of the squad to which Ignace belonged, the sergeant showed becoming patience with the clumsy Pole’s painful efforts to obey orders. Two trying sessions with Ignace on the next day sent his scanty stock of forbearance to the winds. At the morning drill the sergeant had, with difficulty, mastered his growing irritation. Ordered out for drill again that afternoon, Ignace received the rebuke that had been hovering behind the sergeant’s lips since first he had set eyes on the unfortunate Pole.
“See here, you,” rapped out the disgusted “non-com,” after a particularly aggravated display of awkwardness had aroused his pent-up ire. “Where do you think you are, anyway? This is no boiler-factory. You’re in the Army now! Lift up your feet! You’re not stubbing along to work. Pick up your head! First thing you know you’ll be stepping on your neck. That’s a little more like it. Now hold it for two minutes, if you can. If you can’t – into the awkward squad you go to-morrow. Pay attention and do as you’re told when you’re told. Every time you make a move you make it just in time to queer your squad. Now this is the last time I’m going to tell you. I’ve got something better to do than splitting my throat yelling at you.”
This scathing bawling-out of unlucky Ignace occurring just before the drill ended, he escaped, for that day at least, the humiliation of being bundled into the dreaded awkward squad. But to-morrow was yet to be reckoned with. In consequence, he looked a shade more melancholy than usual when, the drill period over, he dejectedly moped along toward the barracks with Jimmy.
A short distance from it, they encountered Bob and Roger, who were also returning from a period of, to them, strenuous drill. As recruits, it would be some little time before they would be ready to adhere to the regular daily program of infantry drill.
“Hello, fellows!” greeted Bob. “Hike along with us and let’s hear the latest. How goes drill?”
“Oh, pretty fair.” Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. Ignace, however, shuffled along beside Jimmy in gloomy silence.
“Cheer up, Iggy.” Guessing the reason for the Pole’s dejection, Bob gave him a friendly slap between his again sagging shoulders. “For goodness’ sake, brace up! When you hump over like that your coat fits you, not. You’d better shove a stick under your arms and across your shoulders, and spend your time until Retreat hiking around camp that way. It’ll be as good as shoulder braces.”
“So will I.” A gleam of purpose, which Bob failed to note, shot into the Pole’s china-blue eyes, as, with a deep sigh, he threw back his shoulders.
“You’d better stop shuffling your feet, too.” Now on the subject, Bob decided to call his disconsolate “Brother’s” attention to this unsoldierlike habit. “Pick ’em up like this.” Bob took a few extravagantly high steps in a purely waggish spirit.
“So will I,” came the resolute repetition. “Soon learn I. It is the yet hard. An’ the words; the words never I un’erstan’.” Ignace’s voice held a note of active distress. It called for sympathy.
“What