Read Online Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos - Free Book Online

his creaky little laugh. “They got in the way of a torpedo.”
    The “wet” canteen was full of smoke and a cosy steam of beer. It was crowded with red-faced men, with shiny brass buttons on their khaki uniforms, among whom was a good sprinkling of lanky Americans.
    “Tommies,” said Fuselli to himself.
    After standing in line a while, Fuselli’s cup was handed back to him across the counter, foaming with beer.
    “Hello, Fuselli,” Meadville clapped him on the shoulder. “You found the liquor pretty damn quick, looks like to me.”
    Fuselli laughed.
    “May I sit with you fellers?”
    “Sure, come along,” said Fuselli proudly, “these guys have been to the front.”
    “You have?” asked Meadville. “The Huns are pretty good scrappers, they say. Tell me, do you use your rifle much, or is it mostly big gun work?”
    “Naw; after all the months I spent learnin’ how to drill with my goddam rifle, I’ll be a sucker if I’ve used it once. I’m in the grenade squad.”
    Someone at the end of the room had started singing:
    “O Mademerselle from Armenteers,
Parley voo!”
    The man with the nervous voice went on talking, while the song roared about them.
    “I don’t spend a night without thinkin’ o’ them funny helmets the Fritzies wear. Have you ever thought that there was something goddam funny about the shape o’ them helmets?”
    “Can the helmets, kid,” said his friend. “You told us all about them onct.”
    “I ain’t told you why I can’t forgit ’em, have I?”
    “A German officer crossed the Rhine;
Parley voo?
A German officer crossed the Rhine;
He loved the women and liked the wine;
Hanky Panky, parley voo …”
    “Listen to this, fellers,” said the man in his twitching nervous voice, staring straight into Fuselli’s eyes. “We made a little attack to straighten out our trenches a bit just before I got winged. Our barrage cut off a bit of Fritzie’s trench an’ we ran right ahead juss about dawn an’ occupied it. I’ll be goddamned if it wasn’t as quiet as a Sunday morning at home.”
    “It was!” said his friend.
    “An’ I had a bunch of grenades an’ a feller came runnin’ up to me, whisperin’, ‘There’s a bunch of Fritzies playin’ cards in a dug-out. They don’t seem to know they’re captured. We’d better take ’em pris’ners!”
    “‘Pris’ners, hell,’ says I, ‘We’ll go and clear the beggars out.’ So we crept along to the steps and looked down. …”
    The song had started again:
    “O Mademerselle from Armenteers,
      Parley voo?”
    “Their helmets looked so damn like toadstools I came near laughin’. An’ they sat round the lamp layin’ down the cards serious-like, the way I’ve seen Germans do in the Rathskeller at home.”
    “He loved the women and liked the wine,
      Parley voo?”
    “I lay there lookin’ at ’em for a hell of a time, an’ then I clicked a grenade an’ tossed it gently down the steps. An’ all those funny helmets like toadstools popped up in the air an’ somebody gave a yell an’ the light went out an’ the damn grenade went off. Then I let ’em have the rest of ’em an’ went away ’cause one o’ ’em was still moanin’-like. It was about that time they let their barrage down on us and I got mine.”
    “The Yanks are havin’ a hell of a time,
      Parley voo?”
    “An’ the first thing I thought of when I woke up was how those goddam helmets looked. It upsets a feller to think of a thing like that.” His voice ended in a whine like the broken voice of a child that has been beaten.
    “You need to pull yourself together, kid,” said his friend.
    “I know what I need, Tub. I need a woman.”
    “You know where you get one?” asked Meadville. “I’d like to get me a nice little French girl on a rainy night like this.”
    “It must be a hell of a ways to the town. … They say it’s full of M.P.’s too,” said Fuselli.
    “I know a way,” said the man with the