Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [15]
So there I was on the night before the big demonstration, ignorant, ascared, and homesick, on guard duty in a tunnel in France. I was on guard with a kid named Earl Sterling from Salt Lake.
“Scientists is going to help us, eh?” Earl said to me.
“That’s what he said,” I told him.
“I’d just as soon of not knowed that much,” Earl said.
Up above ground a big shell went off, and liked to bust our eardrums. There was a barrage going on up above, like giants walking around, kicking the world apart. They was shells from our guns, of course, playing like they was the enemy, playing like they was sore as hell about something. Everbody was down deep in tunnels, so wasn’t nobody going to get hurt.
But wasn’t nobody enjoying all that noise but Captain Poritsky, and he was crazy as a bedbug.
“Simulated this, simulated that,” Earl said. “Them ain’t simulated shells, and I ain’t simulating being ascared of them, neither.”
“Poritsky says it’s music,” I said.
“They say this is the way it really was, back in the real wars,” Earl said. “Don’t see how anybody stayed alive.”
“Holes gives a lot of protection,” I said.
“But back in the old days, didn’t hardly nobody but generals get down in holes this good,” Earl said. “The soldiers had shallow little things without no roof over ’em. And when the orders came, they had to get out of them holes, and orders like that was coming all the time.”
“I expect they’d keep close to the ground,” I said.
“How close can you get to the ground?” Earl wanted to know. “Some places up there the grass is cut down like somebody’d done used a lawn-mower. Ain’t a tree left standing. Big holes everwheres. How come the folks just didn’t go crazy in all them real wars—or quit?”
“Folks are funny,” I said.
“Sometimes I don’t think so,” Earl said.
Another big shell went off, then two little ones—real quick.
“You seen that Russian company’s collection?” Earl said.
“Heard about it,” I said.
“They got close to a hundred skulls,” Earl said. “Got ’em lined up on a shelf like honeydew melons.”
“Crazy,” I said.
“Yeah, collecting skulls like that,” Earl said. “But they can’t hardly help but collect ’em. I mean, they can’t hardly dig in any direction and not find skulls and all. Something big must of happened over there.”
“Something big happened all through here,” I told him.
“This here’s a very famous battlefield from the World War. This here’s where the Americans whipped the Germans. Poritsky told me.”
“Two of them skulls got shrapnel in ’em,” Earl said. “You seen them?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Shake ’em, and you can hear the shrapnel rattle around inside,” Earl said. “You can see the holes where the shrapnel went in.”
“You know what they should ought to do with them poor skulls?” I asked him. “They should ought to get a whole slew of chaplains from ever religion there is. They should ought to give them poor skulls a decent funeral, and bury them someplace where they won’t never be bothered again.”
“It ain’t like they was people any more,” Earl said.
“It ain’t like they wasn’t never people,” I said. “They gave up their lives so our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers could live. The least we can do is treat their poor bones right.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t some of them trying to kill our great-great-grandfathers or whoever it was?” Earl said.
“The Germans thought they was improving things,” I said. “Everbody thought they was improving things. Their hearts was in the right place,” I said. “It’s the thought that counts.”
The canvas curtain at the top of the tunnel opened up, and Captain Poritsky come down from outside. He was taking his time, like there wasn’t nothing out there worse’n a warm drizzle.
“Ain’t it kind of dangerous, going out there, sir?” I asked him. He didn’t have to go out there. There was tunnels running from everwheres to everwheres, and wasn’t nobody supposed to go outside while the barrage was on.
“Ain’t this a rather dangerous profession we picked of our own free will, soldier?” he asked me. He put the back of his hand under my nose, and I seen there was a long