The Dressing Station

The brewery was full of straw, and on the straw there were men in rows.

He had been in it a fortnight ago. On the Sunday, the day before the dog film and the newsreel, C Company had been marched to it and washed in tin baths in hot water, every man in turn, for the first time in a fortnight, with the steam going up into the rafters and Kerrigan singing in a bath at the far end something about a girl from Cork that Sergeant Cutter had told him to stop. It had been a brewery. There were still the great copper vats along one wall, green, and the smell of malt in the brick, under everything. And now the tin baths were stacked in a corner, and the floor was straw, from wall to wall, and on the straw there were stretchers, and on the stretchers there were the Second Kansas.

In rows. Like the crosses in the hollow behind the dunes. Lucien stood in the door at seven in the morning and looked at the rows going away down the length of the brewery under the copper vats, and could not go in.

“Come on,” said Harlan, behind him.

---

They had come out of the line at four.

What was left of the battalion. Another battalion of the division had come up the boards in the dark and taken the wall from the First Louisiane and from them, and they had gone down the boards in single file, holding the man in front by the back of his pack, a mile and a half, to the village, and along the causeway, three miles, to the town; and nobody had said anything the whole way. Not one word. Lucien had walked behind Harlan with his hand on Harlan’s pack and the pocket of his tunic that would not button, and had listened to the boots on the cobbles, and counted them without meaning to, the way his grandmother counted the boats, and stopped counting.

Achille had not come. The First Louisiane had stayed in the wall to hand it over, and then gone wherever it went. At the gap, before they left, Achille had taken hold of the front of his tunic in his fist once more, in the dark, and held it, and let go, and pointed. Not far. Across the yard of boards between them. And Lucien had pointed back.

At the town they had been fed. Hot food, from a field kitchen in the square by the pump, in the dark, stew that was not stew, and tea with rum in it, and bread. Nobody ate much. Then they had been told they could sleep, in the barns, and had not slept, and at first light Lucien had got up from the straw where he had not slept, and Harlan had got up from beside him, and they had walked through the town to the brewery by the station, where the field ambulance was, to find Sergeant Cutter.

---

He was at the far end, by the copper vats.

On a stretcher, on the straw, on his back, under a grey blanket, with a label tied to the buttonhole of his tunic, a card, with writing on it in a doctor’s hand that Lucien could not read; and his face was the colour of the blanket, and he was awake. He was lying with his eyes open, looking up at the rafters of the brewery, the way Harlan had looked up at the slats of Lucien’s bunk in hut forty-one on the first afternoon, with patient interest, as if he were watching weather.

He turned his head when they came down the row between the stretchers and stopped at his feet.

He looked at their boots first. Lucien saw him do it. He looked at them for a long moment, the mud on them, the mud of the drowned fields and the French wall and the dunes; and then up, at their faces.

“Prudhomme,” he said. “Lindgren.”

“Sergeant.”

“They’re sending me back,” said Sergeant Cutter. His voice was very low and very dry, and every few words he stopped. “Base hospital. Then the ship. The doctor says. He says I’ll walk. He says I’ll not soldier.” He looked at the rafters. “Nineteen years.”

Neither of them said anything.

“Sit down,” said Sergeant Cutter. “You’re making the place untidy.”

They sat down on the straw, one on each side of the stretcher.

He did not say anything for a while. He lay and looked at the rafters, and breathed, carefully, the way Harlan had breathed in the bunk on the ship with the swell lifting under him, as if the air were something that might go wrong.

“Prudhomme,” he said, at last.

“Sergeant.”

“You’ll write a letter for me.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“To Hodge. Grenadiers. Second battalion. Wherever they are. It’ll find him.” Sergeant Cutter shut his eyes. “Tell him I stood at his elbow.”

Lucien did not say anything. He could not.

“Tell him that,” said Sergeant Cutter. “That’s all. He’ll know.” He was quiet for a moment, with his eyes shut. “And tell him it wasn’t enough. He’ll know that too.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Write it in English,” said Sergeant Cutter. “He’s got no French. Nor have I.” And then, with his eyes still shut, the thing that Lucien had never once heard him do in six months, at Smoky Hill or on the ship or in the line or on the frozen field: he made a sound that was nearly a laugh. Very short. Dry. Through his nose. The sound Harlan made. “Jolo,” he said. “God help me. I thought Jolo was bad.”

---

Sol Weintraub was in the next row.

He was sitting up. He was not on a stretcher; he was on the straw with his back against the brick under the copper vats and his arm in a sling across his chest, strapped, white, with a label on it, and he had found his spectacles. They were on his nose. One lens was cracked, right across, from side to side, and he was looking at them through it with an expression of great surprise when they came along the row.

“They were in my pocket,” he said. “The whole time. In my tunic. I thought I’d lost them in the water. And they were in my pocket.” He looked at the crack. “I don’t remember putting them there.”

“How’s the arm?” said Harlan.

“It’s my arm,” said Sol Weintraub, politely. “It’s still attached to me. The doctor seemed surprised. He said I’m going home.” He looked at them through the cracked lens. “He said for me the war is over. He said it in that voice. Like it’s a present.”

Nobody said anything.

“Kerrigan,” said Sol Weintraub, after a while. Very quietly.

“Yes,” said Lucien.

Sol Weintraub nodded slowly. He looked at the copper vats.

“He was going to buy the corporal a drink,” he said. “And then hit him.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it,” said Sol Weintraub. “When I get home. I’ll find the corporal. I’ll buy him a drink.” He took his spectacles off and looked at the crack in the lens and put them back on. “I won’t hit him. Kerrigan can do that.”

---

The General came at noon.

They did not know he was coming. Nobody did. There were cars in the square by the pump, suddenly, two of them, with little flags on the wings; and a doctor in a white coat over his uniform came running down the length of the brewery between the rows of stretchers saying on your feet, on your feet, anybody who can stand, and the men in the brewery who could stand stood up, in the straw, among the stretchers, at attention, the ones with slings and bandages and labels, and Lucien and Harlan by Sergeant Cutter’s stretcher at the far end under the copper vats.

He came in at the door.

He was alone. That was the first thing. There were officers behind him in the square, the staff, by the cars, and Major Corliss, Lucien could see the heavy shape of him in the doorway; but they did not come in. The General came into the brewery alone, a grey man in a long coat with his cap pulled down, and stopped inside the door, and stood there, very straight, with his hands behind his back, and looked down the length of the brewery at the rows.

He looked for a long time.

Then he came down the first row, between the stretchers, slowly, on foot, the way he had come across the frozen field.

He did not look at boots.

Lucien saw that. Everybody in the brewery saw it. He came down the row between the stretchers and his eyes did not go down to the feet; there were no boots, mostly, there were blankets, and bandages, and the straw. His eyes went to the faces. To each one. The way Lieutenant Whitcomb’s had gone along the faces of the third platoon in the barn at Hof Verhaeghe on the Tuesday night with his lantern, one after another, not looking at feet, looking at faces, the night before he blew his whistle on the drowned road.

He stopped at some of them. He bent, at some of them, the commander of the Realm’s armies in Europe, and said something very low, and the man on the stretcher answered, or did not, and he straightened up and went on. At one stretcher he stood for a long time without saying anything, and then he took off his glove and put his hand on the blanket, on the man’s chest, the way Ed Haskell had put his hand on his brother’s on the fire step, and left it there a moment, and took it away, and put his glove back on.

He came down the last row, under the copper vats, and stopped at Sergeant Cutter.

---

“Sergeant Cutter,” said the General.

Sergeant Cutter, on his back on the stretcher, under the grey blanket, with his face the colour of it, moved his right hand on the blanket, a little, towards his forehead. It was as far as it would go.

“Sir,” he said.

The General looked down at him.

“We got to the wall, sir,” said Sergeant Cutter. “It was empty. We got to the Casino. The flank. The back stairs.” He stopped to breathe. “We held the top of the stairs till dusk, sir. They didn’t come up again.”

“I know,” said the General.

He said it quietly. The flat dry level voice, the voice that had come across ten yards of dust at Smoky Hill and said Jolo; but quietly, the way you speak in a church. “I have your company’s return, Sergeant. I read it this morning.”

“Lieutenant Whitcomb, sir,” said Sergeant Cutter.

The General waited.

“In the water,” said Sergeant Cutter. “First ten minutes, sir. He stood up. On the road. To bring the waves in to it, I think. To show them where it was.” He looked at the rafters. “I had his coat. I pulled. I wasn’t quick enough.”

The General did not say anything for a long time.

He stood at the foot of the stretcher under the copper vats with his hands behind his back and looked down at Sergeant Cutter, and his face did not do anything at all. It was the face from L’Abeille, held up on the wharf by old Tregre in March. It was the face on the bay horse. Lucien, standing at attention in the straw a yard away, at the head of the stretcher, looked at it as hard as he had ever looked at anything, and it was a closed door.

“You were at his elbow,” said the General.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you were where you should have been, Sergeant,” said the General. “It is not the sergeant who sends the lieutenant onto the water.”

He looked at Sergeant Cutter a moment longer. Then he looked up, across the stretcher, at the two privates standing at the head of it in the straw, at attention, with the mud of the dunes on them. At the tall fair one, whose boot he had had taken off on a frozen field. And at the other.

---

“Le poste d’écoute,” said the General.

“Oui, mon Général.”

The General looked at him. A yard. Across the stretcher. The small pale eyes, very steady, under the peak of the cap, in the lined grey face; looking at him the way his father looked at the lake at four in the morning.

“Ils étaient dans les caves,” said the General. It was not a question. They were in the cellars. The careful French of a book, every word in its place.

“Oui, mon Général. Ils ont monté les escaliers. Quand le barrage est parti.” Yes. They came up the stairs. When the barrage went.

“Comme vous l’aviez dit.”

As you had said.

Lucien looked at him across the stretcher.

He did not know why he said what he said next. He thought it was because of his grandmother, at the kitchen table, with the blue paper: pas le français de l’école; le nôtre. Or because of Captain Pruett in the cellar under the village, writing down the soup. Or because it was true, and he had been asked, on a frozen field, in front of a whole battalion, whether he was sure, and had said that he was sure of what they had said and not of whether it was true; and it had been true; and it had not been his.

“Comme ils l’avaient dit, mon Général,” he said.

As they had said.

The General looked at him.

For a moment, nothing. Then, for the second time, so short a moment that Lucien could not have said whether it happened at all, the small pale eyes went away from his face, down, not to his boots, not to anything, to the grey blanket on the stretcher between them; and came back.

“Oui,” said the General. “Comme ils l’avaient dit.”

He looked at Lucien a moment longer. Then he looked at Sergeant Cutter on the stretcher, and nodded, once; and turned, and went back up the row between the stretchers, under the copper vats, towards the door, slowly, not looking at boots, looking at faces, the whole length of the brewery, one after another.

---

Lucien went out to the pump.

He did not decide to. Sergeant Cutter needed water; there was a tin mug by the stretcher and it was empty, and the pump was outside, in the square, by the side door of the brewery, the door the stretchers came in by; and when the General had gone up the row and out of the main door at the far end, and the men in the brewery had sat down again in the straw, and the doctor in the white coat had gone back to whatever he had been doing, Lucien took the mug and went out of the side door to the pump.

It was in the corner of the square, against the brewery wall, under a little roof of tiles. An iron pump with a long handle, like Madame Verhaeghe’s. He put the mug under the spout and took the handle.

And on the other side of the brewery wall, round the corner, a yard off, by the main door, where the cars were, he heard the General’s voice.

He stopped, with his hand on the handle.

He could not see them. The corner of the brewery wall was between them; the pump was in the angle of it, under its little roof, out of sight of the square. But the main door of the brewery was round the corner, a yard off, open, and the cars were in front of it, and the General was standing by the first car with Major Corliss, and the voices came round the corner of the wall to the pump as clearly as the French had come across forty yards of water to the hole in the brick.

“…on record, sir,” Major Corliss was saying. Heavy, quiet, very tired. “I want it on record. That the intelligence was passed up. The cellars. The wall being emptied. All of it. My intelligence officer passed it up. I passed it up. At a quarter past four yesterday morning I sent it by runner to brigade.”

“It is on record, Major,” said the General. “I read it. At half past five. It was handed to me in the car.”

There was a silence.

“I had read the rest before,” said the General. “All of it. Your Captain Pruett’s reports. A fortnight of them. The cellars, three weeks ago. What a farmer on the other wall said about new men.” The flat dry level voice did not change at all. “On Monday night I wrote to the Minister of War. I wrote that the cellars of the Casino were proof against the guns we had. That the flank of any advance across that water would be taken from the elbow of their wall, as the British flank was taken at the farm at Klaverdijk last year. That the position could not be held if it were taken, because it could not be supplied across the water under observation. I gave him the figure I expected.” A pause. “I signed it. It is on the file, over my name. He has had it since Tuesday.”

Lucien stood at the pump with his hand on the handle and did not breathe.

“Then, sir,” said Major Corliss. Very low. “With respect. Why…”

“Because the British and the Germans have asked for this army, Major,” said the General. “Every week since July. Not for an army. For men. For battalions, to put into their own divisions, a battalion at a time, under their own officers, to fill their own gaps. They have asked the Minister, and they have asked the Prime Minister, and they have asked the King. And the Minister was minded to give them what they asked, because they have said in their papers and in his ear for ten months that the Realm’s army can garrison a wall and can do nothing else.” The voice stayed level. “And if this army is given away a battalion at a time, Major, then nobody in New Westminster will ever answer for what is done with it. It will be British casualties and German casualties with American names. And at the peace the Realm will have had no army. Only men.”

Major Corliss did not say anything.

“So it had to be seen,” said the General. “That it could fight. As an army. Under its own commander. That was the decision. Mine. I wrote what I thought it would cost and I sent it, and then I let it go forward.” He stopped. “It has been seen.”

The pump dripped. One drop and then another, into the mug, under the spout.

“Put it in your report that way, Major,” said the General. “That the operation was ordered against advice, and that the advice was mine, and that I let it go forward. Not your brigade. Not your lieutenants. Not your sergeants.” A pause. “I shall put it in mine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And put in the farmer,” said the General. “And the soup.”

A car door. Another. An engine. Then the cars went out of the square, along the street by the station, with their little flags on the wings, and the sound of them went away towards the town, and the square was quiet.

---

He stood at the pump for a long time.

Then he worked the handle, and the water came, and filled the mug, and ran over, and went on running, over his hand, cold, and he did not stop working the handle until a man from the field ambulance came out of the side door and looked at him and said hey.

He took the mug in to Sergeant Cutter.

Sergeant Cutter was lying with his eyes shut. He opened them when Lucien knelt by the stretcher, and looked at the mug, and at Lucien’s face, for a long time; and Lucien held the mug to his mouth and he drank a little.

“You heard something,” said Sergeant Cutter.

Lucien did not answer.

“Out there. At the pump.” Sergeant Cutter looked at him with his small pale eyes. “You’ve got the face. The one you come back from the pump house with. At six in the morning.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Cutter looked at him a moment longer.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “I don’t want it.” He shut his eyes. “Write to Hodge.”

---

He wrote to Sergeant Hodge that afternoon, in the brewery, on a page from a field ambulance pad, in pencil, in English, sitting on the straw by Sergeant Cutter’s stretcher under the copper vats with the board from the end of a bed across his knees. It was short.

Sergeant Hodge,

Sergeant Cutter asks me to tell you that he stood at his elbow. He says to tell you it was not enough. He says you will know.

It was four hundred yards and a gun on the flank and the cellars were full.

The water was where you said. The road was where I said. We walked on it.

L. Prudhomme, Second Kansas.

He gave it to the man from the field ambulance with the post, and the man looked at the address and said Grenadiers? and Lucien said yes, and the man put it in the sack.

Then he sat on the straw by the stretcher, with Harlan on the other side, and Sergeant Cutter asleep between them, and did not do anything.

He thought about the face.

He thought about it the way he had thought about it on the Sunday after Smoky Hill, folding the blue paper, with il a l’air de Papa blotted at the bottom: that he did not know what was in it. He had looked at it on a bay horse in the heat and by a motor car on a quay in the rain and on a sheet in a hut and on a frozen field and across a stretcher, harder than he had ever looked at anything, and he had never known what was in it. And he had thought, in Kansas, that perhaps nobody did. That perhaps that was what the face was for.

He knew now. Not in it. Behind it. He had not seen it; he had heard it, round the corner of a brewery wall, the way he heard everything that mattered on this coast, in the dark, through a hole in the brick.

Celui-là, il connaît, his father had said. To the lake, at eleven at night, after his grandmother had read it to him twice. That one, he knows.

Lucien sat on the straw and understood for the first time what his father had meant. Not that the General knew about grief, though he did. That he knew what it cost before he paid it, and paid it. That he had sat at a table on Monday night, the way his father had sat at the kitchen table over the trap in the floor in the winter after the yellow fever, in the dark, not moving, and written down the figure, and signed it, and then got up from the table and let the boat go out.

Harlan, across the stretcher, was looking at him.

“Lucky,” he said, very quietly. “What did you hear?”

Lucien looked at him for a long time.

“He knew,” he said. “He wrote it down. On Monday. What it would cost. And sent it.” He looked at Sergeant Cutter’s face on the stretcher between them, the colour of the blanket. “And then he let us go.”

Harlan did not say anything for a long while. He sat on the straw with his big hands between his knees and looked at the copper vats.

“Huh,” he said, at last, so quietly that Lucien hardly heard it.

And then, after another while, the thing the cowboy from Montana had said at the long table in the cookhouse at Smoky Hill, about a sergeant and a general and a pair of boots; the cowboy who was lying at the top of a stair on the dunes, without his hat:

“That’s a hell of a thing to know about a man.”