“You wait till we get butchered in the trenches. We'll see how you like your medicine,” said Eisenstein.
“Damn fool,” muttered Fuselli, composing himself to sleep again.
The bugle wrenched Fuselli out of his blankets, half dead with sleep.
“Say, Bill, I got a head again,” he muttered. There was no answer. It was only then that he noticed that the cot next to his was empty. The blankets were folded neatly at the foot. Sudden panic seized him. He couldn't get along without Bill Grey, he said to himself, he wouldn't have anyone to go round with. He looked fixedly at the empty cot.
“Attention!”
The company was lined up in the dark with their feet in the mud puddles of the road. The lieutenant strode up and down in front of them with the tail of his trench coat sticking out behind. He had a pocket flashlight that he kept flashing at the gaunt trunks of trees, in the faces of the company, at his feet, in the puddles of the road.
“If any man knows anything about the whereabouts of Private 1st-class William Grey, report at once, as otherwise we shall have to put him down A. W. O. L. You know what that means?” The lieutenant spoke in short shrill periods, chopping off the ends of his words as if with a hatchet.
No one said anything.
“I guess he's S. O. L.”; this from someone behind Fuselli.
“And I have one more announcement to make, men,” said the lieutenant in his natural voice. “I'm going to appoint Fuselli, 1st-class private, acting corporal.”