Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [16]
Then, after he’d drunk enough blood to hold hisself a while, he looked me and Earl up and down. “Soldier,” he said to me, “where’s your bayonet?”
I felt around my belt. I’d done forgot my bayonet.
“Soldier, what if the enemy was to all of a sudden drop in?” Poritsky done a dance like he was gathering nuts in May. “‘Sorry, fellows—you wait right here while I go get my bayonet.’ That what you’d say, soldier?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
“When the chips are down, a bayonet is a soldier’s best friend,” Poritsky said. “That’s when a professional soldier is happiest, on account of that’s when he gets to close with the enemy. Ain’t that so?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You been collecting skulls, soldier?” Poritsky said.
“No, sir,” I said.
“Wouldn’t hurt you none to take it up,” Poritsky said.
“No, sir,” I said.
“There’s a reason why ever one of ’em died, soldier,” Poritsky said. “They wasn’t good soldiers! They wasn’t professionals! They made mistakes! They didn’t learn their lessons good enough!”
“Reckon not, sir,” I said.
“Maybe you think maneuvers is tough, soldier, but they ain’t near tough enough,” Poritsky said. “If I was in charge, everbody’d be out there taking that bombardment. Only way to get professional outfits is to get ’em blooded.”
“Blooded, sir?” I said.
“Get some men killed, so’s the rest can learn!” Poritsky said. “Hell—this ain’t no army! They got so many safety rules and doctors, I ain’t even seen a hangnail for six years. You ain’t going to turn out professionals that way.”
“No, sir,” I said.
“The professional has seen everthing, and ain’t surprised by nothing,” Poritsky said. “Well, tomorrow, soldier, you’re going to see real soldiering, the likes of which ain’t been seen for a hundred years. Gas! Rolling barrages! Fire fights! Bayonet duels! Hand-to-hand! Ain’t you glad, soldier?”
“Ain’t I what, sir?” I said.
“Ain’t you glad?” Poritsky said.
I looked at Earl, then back at the captain. “Oh, yes, sir,” I said. I shook my head real slow and heavy. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, indeedy-do.”
When you’re in the Army of the World, with all the fancy new weapons they got, there ain’t but one thing to do. You got to believe what the officers tell you, even if it don’t make sense. And the officers, they got to believe what the scientists tell ’em.
Things has got that far beyond the common man, and maybe they always was. When a chaplain hollered at us enlisted men about how we got to have great faith that don’t ask no questions, he was carrying coals to Newcastle.
When Poritsky finally done told us we was going to attack with the help of a time machine, there wasn’t no intelligent ideas a ordinary soldier like me could have. I just set there like a bump on a log, and I looked at the bayonet stud on my rifle. I leaned over, so’s the front of my helmet rested on the muzzle, and I looked at that there bayonet stud like it was a wonder of the world.
All two hundred of us in the time-screen company was in a big dugout, listening to Poritsky. Wasn’t nobody looking at him. He was just too happy about what was going to happen, feeling hisself all over like he hoped he wasn’t dreaming.
“Men,” that crazy captain said, “at oh-five-hundred hours the artillery will lay down two lines of flares, two hundred yards apart. Them flares will mark the edges of the beam of the time machine. We will attack between them flares.”
“Men,” he said, “between them lines of flares it will be today and July eighteenth, nineteen-eighteen, both at the same time.”
I kissed that bayonet stud. I like the taste of oil and iron in small amounts, but that ain’t encouraging nobody to bottle it.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “you’re going to see some things out there that’d turn a civilian’s hair white. You’re going to see the Americans counter-attacking the Germans back in olden times at Château-Thierry.” My, he was happy. “Men,” he said, “it’s going to be a slaughterhouse in Hell.”
I moved my head up and down, so’s my helmet acted like a pump.