Then his face was gone, and the projectionist said, “Oops,” for he had put the leader in the wrong place, and the countdown was now beginning. “What a mess.”

McAdoo thought he should leave, he should pack, he’d seen this part before, it was just numbers now, but he could never bring himself to leave the picture show, so here he stayed, imagining the coming world, America’s movie, and, dreaming of peace and relief—always found in the last reel, not the first—he put his chin down on the chair in front of him.

4…
3…
2…

2

In July 1918, the U.S.S. Olympia, a frequently patched-and-welded cruiser, plugged across the North Sea, zigzagging among decoy ships to avoid sudden death by torpedo, or the remorseless sway of a plum-colored mine. Aboard were thirteen hundred Allied soldiers, a polynational force under British command: French, Italian, Canadian, and men of the Royal Scots Regiment. Also belowdecks were Company K, of twenty-five forward troops from the 339th of Detroit. They assumed with heartbreaking naïveté that they were heading to France.

Almost to a man, they throbbed with superstition and trust. The Olympia was obviously a lucky vessel to travel on, for it had seen famous service in the Spanish-American War—each doughboy had his photograph taken in front of the polished brass plaque that marked the location where Commodore Dewey had intoned, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” twenty years before. In truth, the men of the 339th of Detroit were anxious to have their own famous phrases coined, to go Over the Top, even if by 1918 most of them were aware that war was no longer a guaranteed jolly rite of passage. It had turned out that war could be tremendously positive or tremendously awful, sometimes both at once. But at least it was tremendous. And when faced with the opportunity to have stories to tell for a lifetime, none of the 339th, Company K, was really going to ask troubling questions, such as “If we’re going to France, why has the quartermaster outfitted us with ham-handed mittens and fur-lined hats?”

Private First Class Hugo Black was an exception. His diaries, among rhapsodies to his last Stateside glass of Sémillon, his last bite of boeuf à la Bourguignonne aux chanterelles, reveal a man troubled by where exactly he was going, and why. Hugo, who had shunned human company since the disastrous East Texas riots, was now in the 339th.