They were all thinking of Johnny.
ROUNDING UP SPIES
No. 2 Gun's Crew had been relieved from the front line and were in rest billets in the little French village of S——, about ten kilos from the front line trench.
The crew were sitting on the ground in a circle around their machine-gun, while a Sergeant, newly returned from a special course at St. Omer, was expounding the theory of scientific machine-gunnery. He himself had never actually been under fire with a machine-gun, but, from the theoretical point, he sure could throw out the book stuff. His flow of eloquence passed over his listeners' heads like a Zeppelin, and there was an uneasy squirming among them.
Happy, who was sitting next to Yank, leaned over, and with his eye on the Sergeant, whispered in his ear: