HERE'S an old saying that the army will either make a man or break him; and in some instances I've seen it work. In the case of the young sojer who answered roll-call as Private Llewelyn, it done both: it broke him, and then it made him. The first come easy. The other, it was hard and terrible.
Now, a man can't be a sojer for twenty-three years in continuous service and not know men—even if he aint got no more book-learning than me. The knowledge will be beat and ground into him, forced into him whether he wants it or not. You see them come, and you see them go; you see them live, and you see them die—and by this last I say you read the most, sometimes. As soon as my eyes caught sight of Private Llewelyn walking into the barricks, I says to myself:
"Sergeant Flowers," I says, "that lad's been brought up under glass; he knows about as much o' the world as you know o' the planet they call the Big Dipper."
He was in civilian clother, and mighty well dressed. His hands and his face was as white as a society belle's. Although he was barely grown, he was as fine a figger of a young man as you'd care to see, with shoulders anybody might ha' envied. He was good-looking, too, with his blue eyes and brown hair; but his mouth and chin, they struck me as being a little weak.
The minute he was in his new khaki uniform, he turned himself loose. He soon went wild. The free-and-easy life of a sojer, after his careful guiding at home, completely upset his head. By the time we had spent a year campaigning in the Philippines, he had sunk almost as low as a man can go without being kicked out o' the service with a dishonorable discharge hanging to him. He drank like a fish, swore and gambled like a pirate, fought at every chance; he spent half his time in the guardhouse. He played off sick when there was anything hard on hand; he even sneaked out o' the common duties o' the garrison. He was a regi mental pariah, a outcast, a nobody, among his comrades. And I noticed that he never wrote any letters home, nor never got any letters from home.
HE regiment was in Catbalogan, on the coast o' Bloody Samar—that word "Bloody" belongs to Samar the same as the word "damned" belongs to a dog in a woman's lap. We was resting after a hard campaign in the interior, and there was a hundred or more sick and wounded in the big old Spanish Government building which served us as a horspital—and a dozen or so o' them was waiting for wooden overcoats. The whole outfit, except a few old reg'lar army men like me, was so lonesome and heartsick and homesick that they couldn't sleep o' nights only when they was a-doing o' guard duty.
It was a little after dark, and I was sergeant o' the guard. As usual, Private Llewelyn was one o' the prisoners. In walks our capt'in, a good-hearted Yankee from Lewiston, Maine. He acknowledges my salute, goes straight to Llewelyn's bunk, and sets down by the side o' Llewelyn. I couldn't help a-overhearing what they said.
"Llewelyn," begins Capt'in Pollard, mighty kind-like, "the first thing you know you're going to get a courtmartial and be fired out o' the army. You'll be disgraced. It'll be published in your home papers, you know. What'll your folks think about it? For their sake, if not for your own," says he, "you ought to turn a new leaf."
Llewelyn replies like he's talking to himself: "I aint got any folks but one."
And there was a quiver in his voice that told me and the Capt'in who that one was.
"What'll she think of it?" asks the company commander.
Llewelyn he looks at the Capt'in and frowns. "She wont neveh know it," he says. "It was like this: She wouldn't let me go into the army," says he, "and so I run away and went to the neahest city and enlisted undeh a false name and with a permit I wrote and witnessed myself."
"Went to Jacksonville," says the Capt'in.
"How did you know?"
"The records show it," answers Capt'in Pollard. "Besides, I know your dialect."
"Humph!" And Llewelyn almost makes a face.
"South Georgy, then," guesses the company commander.
And Llewelyn's count'nance gives it away that the Capt'in had hit the mark that time.
"Did you know," goes on Capt'in Pollard, "that it has been only because o' the mercy of Colonel Lockwood that you have not already been courtmartialed?"
"Please tell the Colonel foh me that I said to give his mehcies to somebody that wants 'em," says Llewelyn.