“Say,” demanded the scout officer, “you save my slum? Gimme my slum.”
“Why, hello, Jim! Why didn’t you come back, like you said you was? Where you been? You said you was comin’ right back.”
“Didn’t you save me my monkey-meat? We went on a raid, damn it. I——”
“Raid? Raid? What raid?”
“Oh, we went over to Torcy. Gimme my monkey-meat.”
“War—sure—is—hell.”
“Well, you see, Jim—the fact is—well, we got moved up here right after you left, and they attacked from in here, an’ we came on in after them. Just got to sleep——”
“I haven’t had any sleep or any chow or anything—two sardines, by the bright face of God!—” The scout officer pounced upon a frowsy musette bag which the other had used for a pillow and jerked out a fire-blackened mess-kit. He wrenched the lid off and snarled horribly. “Empty, by God!”
His hands fell lax across his knees. He looked sadly over the blasted fields to Torcy, and he said, with the cold bitterness of a man who has tried it all and come to a final conclusion: “War—sure—is—hell.”