“Battle of Paris?” said Cohan in a sympathetic voice. “Battle of Nice! I'm going back to my section soon. I'd never have got a court-martial if I'd been with my outfit. I was in the Base Hospital 15 with pneumonia.”
“Tough luck!”
“It was a hell of a note.”
“Say, Dook, your outfit was working with ours at Chamfort that time, wasn't it?”
“You mean when we evacuated the nut hospital?”
“Yes, wasn't that hell?” Dan Cohan gulped down half a glass of red wine, smacked his thick lips, and began in his story-telling voice:
“Our section had just come out of Verdun where we'd been getting hell for three weeks on the Bras road. There was one little hill where we'd have to get out and shove every damn time, the mud was so deep, and God, it stank there with the shells turning up the ground all full of mackabbies as the poilus call them.... Say, Dook, have you got any money?”
“I've got some,” said Dook, without enthusiasm.
“Well, the champagne's damn good here. I'm part of the outfit in this gin mill; they'll give it to you at a reduction.”
“All right!”