Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I2 : guides, or guardians or escorts still ac- companied them, and the motorcycle still panted from the rear of the column. A few civilians, street car men or letter car- riers, hurrying to an early morning task, looked at them with little curiosity. The spectacle of marching troops was no new one in this vicinity. The company halted along some railroad tracks where more troops joined them and, after a short wait, they were ordered to climb into some dark cars. The curtains of these were down and the men were informed that any one who raised one of those curtains would regret it bitterly. So in this manner, in darkness and with drawn shades, the train began to move and to carry these men to whatever fate awaited them. ~~) THE men sat two ina seat, and with Bt their packs and rifles the space was SJ rather constrained. Eadie’s seat- mate was uncommunicative. He sullenly rolled himself a cigaret and smoked it silently, spitting on the floor and rubbing out the spit with his foot. The sergeant rested his head on his hand and tried to sleep. In sleep one forgot one’s troubles. The train jolted too much and his legs were cramped. He wished he might converse with Jake Brown, the hairy man, but the hairy man was over six feet tall and so was not in the same squad with the sergeant, for the men lined up according to height the tallest at the nght. As for all the at- tention that was paid to Eadie’s stripes, they might just as well have been sewn on his underwear. Probably every one con- sidered him as good as busted anyway. A train man went through the cars and lighted some dim lamps. Some of the soldiers clustered under these and tried to read scraps of newspapers they had picked up, but they did not derive much enjoy- ment therefrom. Eadie tried to think of the romance of it, of the exaltation of going to war and of offering one’s life for one’s country, but with no success. There is little romance in tramping through cold, silent streets, between rows of dark houses with people warmly asleep inside them, and one’s self outside in the cold dawn. There is no room for exaltation when one is tired and sleepy and burdened with a full pack that cuts the shoulders and a rifle that weighs more than a six-inch gun. Soldiers are but men and boys after all Adventure and can not sleep comfortably two in a day- coach seat any more than civilians can. So Eadie drowsed, and the lamps shone in his eyes and his neighbor’s elbow poked him in the ribs and his neighbor’s rifle fell down and barked his knees, and he was very miserable. When daylight came he peeked out be- tween the window edge and the curtain. The train was clattering across marshes somewhere, and nothing could be seen but a signboard or two proclaiming the excel- lence of some New York hotel, rates a dollar and a half a day up, and the wearing quali- ties of a certain brand of garter. After that Eadie looked out no more, but sat alternately trying to sleep and watching the overcoats swaying from their hooks over- head. He reflected that they would prob- ably get no breakfast unless the Red Cross took pity on them and boarded the train somewhere with coffee and sandwiches. About five o’clock the train came to a jarring stop and some of the men who were curious enough to peek out the door an- nounced that the train was in a freight yard. For the better part of an hour the engine backed and pulled, shuffling up and down between long rows of silent cars as if it were doing its best to lose the passengers or cover its own trail. At last it started once more to gather speed and finally away it went, clitter-clatter, clitter-clatter, trippety- trip, as if the engineer had at last made up his mind where he wanted to go. <A few Sister Annes looked forth again. They expressed surprize. “Hey!” they called excitedly, “lookit! The river! We’re goin’ by New York!” “‘Lookit the ships!”’ cried one, “all camel- flagged! Boy, we’re goin’ to Hoboken sure!” “Sit down,” growled others. ‘Sit down! All the railroads go by that river. That don’t mean nothin’!”’ ‘“We’re goin’ to Hoboken all right, but we won’t stop even for water!’ “Veh, that’s right,” spoke up Eadie’s seatmate. ‘The nearest we'll ever get to France will be Long Island or Seaconk or some other ash-dump like it. I ain’t been in the Army all o’ four months without learnin’ somethin.’ ” : AS FOR Eadie, he resolutely tried =g to think of something else. He knew that if he got his heart made up to finding himself on the way to a trans- port, and then after a weary day on the CoOMmichook< Wh) (© 5}