Kipling's Choice Read Online Free Page B

friends is growing longer every day.
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    The tip of my shoe,
John thinks when he tries to rub the dried blood from his eyes.
The chalk pit, France, yes ... First my leg, the German machine-gun nest, the run through the brush, the ear-splitting bang, creeping forward, my head feeling like a block of ice, blood everywhere, terrible, surging pain. Where is the pain? No pain, no, please!
    The chalky field by the Bois Hugo is covered with dark spots from shell explosions, the rims colored red from bleeding bodies. John lies powerless on his side and focuses on that one foot, the tip of his low black army shoe. He is covered in white dust.
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    "They will shine like a mirror!"
    It is so quiet at Warley Barracks that you can hear the wind blowing through the rose beds. The drill sergeant steps past the row of officer candidates and peers at them, boys still, standing stiffly at attention. Only the creak of leather from his coal-black shoes on the concrete pierces through the menacing silence now and then. He turns on his heel and stops by John Kipling. Since John is the smallest, he is standing at the front of the line.
    "Isn't that so,
Mister
Kipling?"
    "Yes,
sir!
"John says, and swallows.
    "Like a mirror!"
    John is familiar with military drills from his days at Wellington School. Still, this sergeant-major isn't easy. He has at most a few weeks to take these budding officers, these schoolboys, and mold them into obedient lieutenants who will soon be commanding their own men.
    The modern khaki uniforms are inspected: green puttees wound tightly around the calves from the knee to the ankle; the pistol belt at the middle of the coat, with two leather bands rising straight over the shoulders. The sergeant-major inspects each detail. John feels the sweat streaming down his face and neck. The officer lets his eye fall on the flat knapsack. Is the thick winter coat securely tucked away? And who lashed his woolen blanket over his pack like a crushed sausage? He zigzags among the recruits and here and there taps his stick on a hip bag or a bayonet in its sheath. John puffs under his thirty kilos of equipment. Even the ten cartridge holders are full of ammunition; they are contained in five leather pouches mounted on the left and right straps, under the breast pocket. Slung over his shoulder is a rifle, heavy as lead and as tall as John himself.
    Just give me a revolver,
John thinks. If he could get his gold star, he would gladly exchange this long Enfield for an officer's pistol.
    And that gold star comes very quickly. The war won't wait and it is consuming many officers. On the very day John receives his star, he is standing in front of a platoon of new boys and shouting himself hoarse. John is being drilled on how to drill under the watchful eye of an aging sergeant.
    "I'm losing my voice," John writes home, "and my feet are swollen and pinched in those new shoes, but otherwise a soldier's life is wonderful! Sorry, an
officer's
life! For today we've gotten our gold stars."
    "That star will be celebrated appropriately," Daddo writes back on the day he receives John's letter. He promises to buy his son a car.
    "A Singer?" John's roommates ask in surprise.
    "Not a sewing machine, an automobile," John explains. He nods and passes the letter from one bed to the other.
    "I honestly don't think that there is a better car to buy," writes his father, the car fanatic. "She is unbelievably strong and fast, and handles so well. And she's terribly attractive."
    John's friends are amused as he reads Daddo's letter aloud while stretched out on his bed.
    "Of course that little car must have a name," the old Kipling goes on.
    John continues: "It must be a famous singer, Patti or Caruso or perhaps Depeche Melba!"
    "Car-Uso? Yes, that's a singer. A
real
Singer!" Everyone laughs.
    The letter is passed from hand to hand.
    "Next week we're scooting over to the city to the theater or the Music Hall!" John croaks in his worn-out voice. "Three candidates are