Page:Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos.pdf/14

10 towards them. By their gestures and the way they walked, the men at attention could see that they were chatting about something that amused them. One of the officers laughed boyishly, turned away and walked slowly back across the parade ground. The other, who was the lieutenant, came towards them smiling. As he approached his company, the smile left his lips and he advanced his chin, walking with heavy precise steps.

"Sergeant, you may dismiss the company." The lieutenant's voice was pitched in a hard staccato. The sergeant's hand snapped up to salute like a block signal.

"Companee dis...missed," he sang out.

The row of men in khaki became a crowd of various individuals with dusty boots and dusty faces. Ten minutes later they lined up and marched in a column of fours to mess. A few red filaments of electric lights gave a dusty glow in the brownish obscurity where the long tables and benches and the board floors had a faint smell of garbage mingled with the smell of the disinfectant the table had been washed off with after the last meal. The men, holding their oval mess kits in front of them, filed by the great tin buckets at the doors, out of which meat and potatoes were splashed into each plate by a sweating K. P. in blue denims.

"Don't look so bad tonight," said Fuselli to the man opposite him as he hitched his sleeves up at the wrists and leaned over his steaming food. He was sturdy, with curly hair and full vigorous lips that he smacked hungrily as he ate.

"It ain't," said the pink flaxen-haired youth opposite him, who wore his broad-brimmed hat on the side of his head with a certain jauntiness.

"I got a pass tonight," said Fuselli, tilting his head vainly.

"Goin' to tear things up?"

"Man... I got a girl at home back in Frisco. She's a good kid."

"Yer right not to go with any of the girls in this goddam town. ...They ain't clean, none of 'em. ... That is if ye