“Too damn risky!”
“Listen to the kid. It'll be too damn risky in the trenches.... Or do you think you're goin' to get a cushy job in camp here?”
“Hell, no! I want to go to the front. I don't want to stay in this hole.”
“Well?”
“But ain't no good throwin' yerself in where it don't do no good.... A guy wants to get on in this army if he can.”
“What's the good o' gettin' on?” said the corporal. “Won't get home a bit sooner.”
“Hell! but you're a non-com.”
Another train of motor trucks went by, drowning their Talk.
Fuselli was packing medical supplies in a box in a great brownish warehouse full of packing cases where a little sun filtered in through the dusty air at the corrugated sliding tin doors. As he worked, he listened to Daniels talking to Meadville who worked beside him.
“An' the gas is the goddamndest stuff I ever heard of,” he was saying. “I've seen fellers with their arms swelled up to twice the size like blisters from it. Mustard gas, they call it.”