He shook his head sleepily: “You must all be there first.”
Tjaden grinned: “We are all here.”
The sergeant-cook still took no notice. “That may do for you,” he said. “But where are the others?”
“They won’t be fed by you today. They’re either in the dressing-station or pushing up daisies.”
The cook was quite disconcerted as the facts dawned on him. He was staggered. “And I have cooked for one hundred and fifty men—”
Kropp poked him in the ribs. “Then for once we’ll have enough. Come on, begin!”
Suddenly a vision came over Tjaden. His sharp, mousy features began to shine, his eyes grew small with cunning, his jaws twitched, and he whispered hoarsely: “Man! then you’ve got bread for one hundred and fifty men too, eh?”
The sergeant-cook nodded absentminded, and bewildered.
Tjaden seized him by the tunic. “And sausage?”
Ginger nodded again.
Tjaden’s chaps quivered. “Tobacco too?”
“Yes, everything.”
Tjaden beamed: “What a beanfeast! That’s all for us! Each man gets—wait a bit—yes, practically two issues.”
Then Ginger stirred himself and said: “That won’t do.”
We got excited and began to crowd around.
“Why won’t that do, you old carrot?” demanded Katczinsky.
“Eighty men can’t have what is meant for a hundred and fifty.”
“We’ll soon show you,” growled Müller.
“I don’t care about the stew, but I can only issue rations for eighty men,” persisted Ginger.
Katczinsky got angry. “You might be generous for once. You haven’t drawn food for eighty men. You’ve drawn it for the Second Company. Good. Let’s have it then. We are the Second Company.”
We began to jostle the fellow. No one felt kindly toward him, for it was his fault that the food often came up to us in the line too late and cold. Under shellfire he wouldn’t bring his kitchen up near enough, so that our soup-carriers had to go much farther than those of the other companies. Now Bulcke of the First Company is a much better fellow. He is as fat as a hamster in winter, but he trundles his pots when it comes to that right up to the very front-line.
We were in just the right mood, and there would certainly have been a dustup if our company commander had not appeared. He informed himself of the dispute, and only remarked: “Yes, we did have heavy losses yesterday.”
He glanced into the dixie. “The beans look good.”
Ginger nodded. “Cooked with meat and fat.”
The lieutenant looked at us. He knew what we were thinking. And he knew many other things too, because he came to the company as a noncom and was promoted from the ranks. He lifted the lid from the dixie again and sniffed. Then passing on he said: “Bring me a plate full. Serve out all the rations. We can do with them.”
Ginger looked sheepish as Tjaden danced round him.
“It doesn’t cost you anything! Anyone would think the quartermaster’s store belonged to him! And now get on with you, you old blubber-sticker, and don’t you miscount either.”
“You be hanged!” spat out Ginger. When things get beyond him he throws up the sponge altogether; he just goes to pieces. And as if to show that all things were equal to him, of his own free will he issued in addition half a pound of synthetic honey to each man.
Today is wonderfully good. The mail has come, and almost every man has a few letters and papers. We stroll over to the meadow behind the billets. Kropp has the round lid of a margarine tub under his arm.
On the right side of the meadow a large common latrine has been built, a roofed and durable construction. But that is for recruits who as yet have not learned how to make the most of whatever comes their way. We want something better. Scattered about everywhere there are separate, individual boxes for the same purpose. They are square, neat boxes with wooden sides all round, and have unimpeachably satisfactory seats. On the sides are hand grips enabling one to shift them about.
We move three together in a ring and sit down comfortably. And it will be two hours before we get up again.
I well remember how embarrassed we were as recruits in barracks when we had to use the general latrine. There were no doors and twenty men sat side by side as in a railway carriage, so that they could be reviewed all at one glance, for soldiers must always be under supervision.
Since then we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties. In time things far worse than that came easy to us.
Here in the open air though, the business is entirely a pleasure. I no longer understand why we should always have shied at these things before. They are, in fact, just as natural as eating and drinking. We might perhaps have paid no particular attention to them had they not figured so large in our experience, nor been such novelties to our minds—to the old hands they had long been a mere matter of course.
The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language.
Enforced publicity has in our eyes restored the character of complete innocence to all these things. More than that, they are so much a matter of course that their comfortable performance is fully as much enjoyed as the playing of a safe top running flush. Not for nothing was the word “latrine-rumour” invented; these places are the regimental gossip-shop and common-rooms.
We feel ourselves for the time being better off than in any palatial white-tiled “convenience.” There it can only be hygienic; here it is beautiful.
These are wonderfully carefree hours. Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon
