HOW LIKE A GOD
71
accents, and I found that I had as much trouble in making out
what the Negroes or the Sergeant First Class from California said
as I did in penetrating the accents of those of my students whose
English had been acquired secondarily.
This
was
all
the more re–
markable since it quite contradicted the clarity of speech and voice
I knew they commanded in the field. To be sure, the orders they
issued there were circumscribed and formal, though I had heard
all of them at one time or another speak with admirable distinctness
to a company of troops, giving relatively elaborate instructions simply
and pointedly. But when I asked them to read a sentence such as
"The men followed the path around the barn and into the forest,"
a most original series of renditions were likely to come forth. The
Negroes invariably read "The mens...." I could count on hearing,
"The men flowed around the barn...." from someone, and I was
always prepared for "The men followed the path around the forest
and into the barn." To them the simplest printed words were as the
bull on a target five hundred yards away is to a trainee; the dim
black markings would waver and swing, elongate and disappear, and
the students' voices would droop and quiver and suddenly ascend
with stress and fatigue, just as the rifle of the untrained marksman,
because of the flabbiness of his muscles and the spasmic cramping
induced by the contortions of the standard aiming positions, moves
erratically about the target. They would grasp their books as if they
were likely to scuttle away, expending uncommon effort to bring the
words a few yards closer. Sometimes they tried to extort the books
themselves of the information they seemed so reluctant to yield, and
each session was orchestrated by the audible and furious wrenching
of bindings, creasing of pages, underlining of words that meant noth–
ing, and general activity upon the form and body of the page, as
if the discharge of physical energy upon an object were itself a
guarantee of memory and comprehension.
Nevertheless, the diffe-ences among them were soon apparent.
The Chilean was easily the star of the class. The examination would
confront him with no difficulties, nor did he really need this course.
Small and scrawny, with grizzled skin and wiry limbs, he seemed,
so many Regular Army men, about fifteen years older than he
He had completed high school in his native country, and when
asked
him
why he hadn't obtained the necessary documents to
