"The private can't do without 'em," Lamuse asserts. "Without them, to make your braces stick to your breeches, the game's up."
"And I've always got in my pocket," says Blaire, "so's they're within reach, my case of rings." He brings it cut, wrapped up in a gas-mask bag, and shakes it. The files ring inside, and we hear the jingle of aluminium rings in the rough.
"I've always got string," says Biquet, "that's the useful stuff!"
"Not so useful as nails," says Pepin, and he shows three in his hand, big, little, and average.
One by one the others come to join in the conversation, to chaffer and cadge. We are getting used to the half-darkness. But Corporal Salavert, who has a well-earned reputation for dexterity, makes a hanging lamp with a candle and a tray, the latter contrived from a Camembert box and some wire. We light up, and around its illumination each man tells what he has in his pockets, with parental preferences and bias.
"To begin with, how many have we?"
"How many pockets? Eighteen," says some one—Cocon, of course, the man of figures.
"Eighteen pockets! You're codding, rat-nose," says big Lamuse.
"Exactly eighteen," replies Cocon. "Count them, if you're as clever as all that."
Lamuse is willing to be guided by reason in the matter, and putting his two hands near the light so as to count accurately, he tells off his great brick-red fingers: Two pockets in the back of the greatcoat; one for the first-aid packet, which is used for tobacco; two inside the greatcoat in front; two outside it on each side, with flaps; three in the trousers, and even three and a half, counting the little one in front.