For
the first time in his life he was in constant personal contact with the
waiters to whom he had given tips, the chauffeurs who had touched their
hats to him, the carpenters, plumbers, barbers, and farmers who had
previously been remarkable only in the subservience of their
professional genuflections. During his first two months in camp he did
not hold ten minutes' consecutive conversation with a single man.
On the service record his occupation stood as "student"; on the original
questionnaire he had prematurely written "author"; but when men in his
company asked his business he commonly gave it as bank clerk--had he
told the truth, that he did no work, they would have been suspicious of
him as a member of the leisure class.
His platoon sergeant, Pop Donnelly, was a scraggly "old soldier," worn
thin with drink. In the past he had spent unnumbered weeks in the
guard-house, but recently, thanks to the drill-master famine, he had
been elevated to his present pinnacle. His complexion was full of
shell-holes--it bore an unmistakable resemblance to those aerial
photographs of "the battle-field at Blank." Once a week he got drunk
down-town on white liquor, returned quietly to camp and collapsed upon
his bunk, joining the company at reveille looking more than ever like a
white mask of death.
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