Red put his question. "Tell us about the fightin', Buzz. Is it like they say?"
It was Buzz Werner's great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden. He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance.
"G'wan, Buzz," they urged.
Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have used a year before, as to choice. "There's nothin' to tell. A guy didn't have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got yours, or either you didn't. That's all there was to it. Je's, it was fierce!"
They waited. Nothing more. "Yeh, but tell us—"
And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back, respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new dignity.
"S'long, boys," he said. And limped off, toward home.
And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And in his place—head high, chest up, eyes clear—limped Ernest Werner, the man.