Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (16 page)

Black soldiers were segregated in special military units and were mostly deployed behind the battle lines in support units. In spite of the obvious prejudice and segregation black soldiers demonstrated their loyalty and proved their bravery in every combat situation. No soldier who had ever fought in the same combat areas as the Harlem Hellfighters, otherwise named the Fifteenth New York National Guard Regiment, would ever doubt that the soldiers were spirited, strong, and brave warriors. The regiment was awarded the Legion of Merit by the War Department. The French presented the Croix de Guerre to the Harlem Hellfighters.

Aloysius could not convince the draft board that he was a native artist not a laborer. We were both designated as laborers, mere stable boys. My brother painted a blue raven and in the talons the word “artist” was boldly printed on a Registration Card.

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G
AS
A
TTACK

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1918
— — — — — — —

Augustus arrived at the livery stable one early morning last spring, a few months before his death, to talk about the war. He was aware that we had registered for the draft, and several cousins had already been mustered for service. Our uncle was worried that so many young native men, and mostly our relatives in one generation, would be at risk of death and serious wounds in the war.

Augustus might not have appreciated the adventures of war that we two imagined at the time. Our uncle was eighteen years old at the end of the American Civil War and had never forgotten how the nation was ravaged by savagery and lasting misery. The war ended just three years before the federal treaty that established the White Earth Reservation in 1868.

Sadly, our favorite uncle died before we went to war, and before the creation of my first stories. That quiet morning in the stable he promised to publish in the
Tomahawk
the stories of my experiences as a soldier, and to designate a weekly section in the newspaper for my war stories. Augustus had already created a new series headline,
French Returns
by Basile Hudon Beaulieu. A heady moment, of course, but my uncle insisted at the time that my stories must be written with a first and second person voice, and contain some historical information and descriptive scenes of soldiers and combat, and with the horror, humor, and irony of war.

That glorious promise by my uncle was the start of a native literary presence and lingered in the moist air that spring morning, and stayed with me, and the saddles, straw bales, and cobwebs on the windows. The horses were silent, and seemed to wait for my response. My brother turned and answered for me, “Basile will create war stories.” I came to my senses and told my uncle that my stories would never be written with an omniscient point of view.

Augustus considered monotheistic creation an ironic story, at best, and argued that critical view many times with Father Aloysius. The two were
good friends, and the discussions between a priest and an editor with strong ideas were always lively, especially over a bottle of sacramental wine. I was present several times when the subject of monotheism was “resurrected,” as my uncle exclaimed, only to provoke the necessary examination of polytheism, churchy liturgy, and original native stories and literature. Augustus declared that monotheism spawned the farcical notion of omniscient points of view by authors, and without any sense of irony. Tricky shamans, my uncle told the priest, were more clever healers than disciples, scripture, and omniscient authors because shamans devised the practice of irony to overturn separatism and singular stories of creation. Even a dunce could imagine stories with more chance and wriggle than an omniscient author with no sense of irony.

Clement Hudon Beaulieu had not been told about the promise his brother had made to publish my stories in the
Tomahawk
, and he worried as the new editor about the financial success of the weekly newspaper. A few months later, just before we were activated for military service, he revised that golden promise and agreed only to publish my stories about the war as a separate newsprint pamphlet, but not in the
Tomahawk
. The change of the promise bothered me, of course, but the decision was practical and actually a protection. My stories would be complicated to compose on the patent pages, and should the newspaper be discontinued after more than twenty years of publication on the reservation, my stories would continue to be published as a pamphlet. My stories would be set in type, printed and folded on a single sheet of newsprint, and circulated on the reservation as a series. So, the newsprint pamphlets of my original stories were published, and my family continued to print the series for many years after the war and the termination of the
Tomahawk
. The
French Returns
stories were always free on the reservation and remained in my name.

I started my series of stories the minute the train departed from the Ogema Station. The war for every soldier starts at a train station, and our war started one balmy morning that summer. Aloysius painted a scene of several soldiers with the wings of blue ravens, and later he gave a blue raven medal to Patch Zhimaaganish. John Razor, Robert, Allan, and Romain Fairbanks, Louis Swan, and Johnson King had been mustered and were on the train to war. The mighty engine surged and steam shrouded the platform.

Patch Zhimaaganish, our good friend, saluted the station agent and was the last person to board the train. Patch, the soldier, who had been hired as a real assistant station clerk a few months before he was drafted, wore a smart new uniform ordered from the Sears Roebuck Military Equipment Catalogue. Patch waved to his mother, and we waved to our family and friends on the platform, adieu, au revoir, goodbye. Aloysius turned away with a wistful smile. We were native brothers by heart and honor on our way to war.

The Soo Line Railroad made the usual stops at Callaway, Detroit Lakes, Alexandria, and soldiers boarded at every station on the line. We had boarded the very same train nine years earlier, our first adventure outside the reservation. Aloysius remembered similar scenes on our first journey to Minneapolis.

Augustus had encouraged us to discover the world, and he paid our train fare, and had reserved a hotel in the city. We visited the great public library, the West Hotel, the Nicollet Hotel, and the Orpheum Theatre. Aloysius was inspired by the
Woman in the Garden
, a painting by Yamada Baske. The
Japanese artist was an instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts.

Late that afternoon the train arrived at the Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis. We walked two blocks to the Great Northern Depot on the Mississippi River with hundreds of other soldiers and boarded the Oriental Limited for Chicago. The exotic train crossed the Stone Arch Bridge, roared through the countryside, and my melancholy face was reflected on the window that night between the stations.

Soldiers boarded at every town on the route, and the train arrived the next day in Chicago. The houses in the city had been built with white pine from the White Earth Reservation. Our reservation was never the same, and most of the houses were in need of paint. We waited for more than six hours at the crowded station and then boarded the Norfolk Southern Railroad for Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Camp Wadsworth, a new divisional cantonment, one of many recent military training sites in the country, was located about three miles from Spartanburg. The city was overrun with soldiers on their way to war. The camp was in the foothills of the mountains south of Asheville, and west of Charlotte, North Carolina. We arrived late at night, tired, hungry, and forlorn. Hundreds of other soldiers had just completed their training and were
departing for war from the station at the same time. More than thirty thousand soldiers were at the camp in various stages of combat training.

The First Pioneer Infantry was constituted that early summer at Camp Wadsworth. Soldiers who were hunters and had experience in nature and woodcraft were selected to serve in advanced combat infantry units to clear and construct roads. Most reservation natives were hunters and lived closer to nature than soldiers from the city.

Aloysius was associated with art, the abstract images of art, but he was not a heavy hunter or timber cutter. I was considered a writer, and that was true, but never by the separation of nature. So, the officers encouraged me to teach illiterate soldiers how to read and write. Some soldiers thought that was a racial contradiction, that a backward reservation native would teach others how to write. My brother worried at the time about the absolute selection of soldiers for road construction in combat.

Later, however, we were nominated for even more dangerous duty as scouts in several combat battalions and regiments. The native artist and writer were chosen to infiltrate enemy positions at night and gather strategic information. Patch was selected to play the bugle and sing with the Regimental Band. Robert Fairbanks and Louis Swan were selected and trained for combat construction in the First Pioneer Infantry.

Aloysius was elated the next morning when he saw the Blue Ridge Mountains. The trees had created a blue haze, and the scene was an inspiration of natural art. He carried a small notebook and drew blue ravens over the haze of mighty trees. Catawba natives, we learned later, had hunted in the nearby mountains, but the only natives we met at the training camp were soldiers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York.

The soldiers were inoculated, examined by a doctor, and the next day ordered to complete an army intelligence test. No one had ever heard of a brain or mental test. The scores were not revealed to the soldiers, so we created smart scores as a tease. My practice of reading the
Tomahawk
and memorizing a few paragraphs to hawk the newspaper at the train station must have increased the score of my intelligence. There was nothing on the test about natural reason, the seasons, horses, plovers, peyote, mongrels that detected diseases, or ironic stories. Surely native artists and descendants of the crane totem and the fur trade were smarter than federal agents and the reservation police.

Reveille was at six in the morning, and after our first assembly, mess, and fatigue detail we reported to the quartermaster for new uniforms, wool shirts, trousers, brogans, canvas leggings, and other equipment. The shirts, shoes, and trousers of hundreds of soldiers were sized by eye. The sergeant who sized us was a tailor from New York. He never made a mistake. We were truly restyled as soldiers in campaign hats with blue cords. Naturally, the color of the hat cord was notable. By seven in the morning some soldiers reported to the stables, others to fatigue duty. We had experience with horses but that would not matter in the schedule of fatigue duty, company drills, and combat training. We were there to be trained as infantry trench soldiers, not to ride horses. Once we were issued our equipment, canteens, mess kits, canvas backpacks, first aid packet, wool blankets, ponchos, identity tags, and practiced to march in a military manner, it was time
for dinner.

Ten soldiers lived in a pyramid tent with a wooden floor and partial sidewalls. There were thousands of tents pitched in perfect rows, a city of canvas pyramids. Aloysius was assigned a bunk directly across from mine. John Razor was near the entrance, and the other natives from the reservation were in nearby tents. The bunks were metal and covered with a thin mattress. We lived and trained for weeks with strangers from other states.

Springfield bolt-action rifles were issued to every new trench soldier, and rigorous combat training started on the third day. First we were instructed to fight with bayonets, throw hand grenades, and fire mortars. The start of our training was not much of a challenge, but later it became more intense. The officers had ordered extended exercises for a few days in preparation for a twenty-six mile march to the rifle range at Glassy Peak Mountain.

Aloysius fired ten times and every round hit the center of the target. John Razor and Robert Fairbanks were singled out along with my brother as marksmen in the first round of shooters on the rifle range. There were about sixty targets at fifty yards, and the shooting lasted most of the day. My ears were ringing. We camped overnight in the area, and then continued training for three more days in the elaborate trenches.

Senior officers had studied the strategies of trench combat in France and returned to construct a series of similar trenches at the camp. There were eight miles of trenches, eight to ten feet deep, and several grand bunkers that were more than thirty feet deep. We simulated combat with the enemy
in the front line trenches, and then moved back to the reserve trenches. Grimly, we were ordered to practice “over the top” assaults through tangled barbed wire. Every soldier realized at the time that “over the top” of the trench in the face of the enemy was certain death, an absurd military suicide. The simulated maneuvers were executed at night, and with sudden feigned mustard gas attacks. The officers calculated that a real gas attack would have lingered over the trenches. Our sergeant shouted that mustard gas stinks just like the name, mustard and horseradish. The training with gas masks that night was terrifying but very effective. Several soldiers in various sections of the trenches were assigned to sound the alarm, beat a bell, or rattle a chain of cans at the first trace of poison gas.

The French officers who were appointed to train us in trench combat denied that their country ever used gas, and condemned the evil Hun, Boche, or Germans. Gas warfare was worldwide, even the warhorses and dogs wore gas masks. The French officers were courteous, but with a firm hand instructed the soldiers how to survive in trench combat. The British officers were haughty, rather detached, and not effective combat instructors. The British were mocked every night when we returned to the reserve trenches. The arrogant poses and manners were so easy to imitate.

A thunderstorm and heavy waves of rain flooded the trenches on the second night, and there was no escape. The water washed out ammunition niches and huge rocks on the trench walls. We waded for hours in the muck and carried out our military duties of map and compass reading. We were trained to direct artillery fire against the enemy. There in the rain, stuck in the mud, we read out loud from a wet War Department manual on how to use a compass. Suddenly, between bolts of lightning the officers ordered another feigned gas attack, a perfect time to test the readiness of soldiers. We adjusted our wet masks and continued the compass course.