"Convoy of trucks comin' to pick us up. That's what I hear, anyway."
Tom was silent for a while. Then he asked: "I'm not going to have any trouble with that, am I?"
"No, but take it easy for the next couple of days. I'll put a bandage on it, but it takes time for that stuff to gel."
He went to work on the bandage, while his companion started packing up the apparatus. Five minutes later they had gone.
Tom lay thinking. None of his questions had yet been answered. He still could not think coherently about even the recent past. And nobody had been able to state clearly just whom they were fighting, though everyone agreed on the motives for the war: they were defending freedom against tyranny—it was as simple and as basic as that. However, it somehow left Tom unsatisfied.
"Well, what did I tell you?" the soldier next to him remarked. "Discipline. No trucks. No picnic. Just discipline. Say, how about a cigarette. I must have dropped mine in the scramble."
"Sure." Tom threw him a mashed, half-empty pack.
"Hey, thanks." He lit one, carefully buttoning the rest in a pocket of his fatigue jacket. "Thanks a lot."
"Okay, you guys," came the hoarse command. "Strip them butts! We're movin'."
"Discipline," the soldier muttered bitterly, crushing the cigarette into the gravel. "Discipline."