Since Than Shwe was to dine that night with a Burmese officer and Jan was to eat with a truck crew that had just arrived, Gale and Isabelle took their mess kits and went to join in the lineup for chow.
“We’ll have better arrangements for you girls later,” the colonel had said to her.
“You couldn’t!” she exclaimed.
“Oh yes!” he had smiled. “A mess hall all your own—just for the ladies of the camp.”
“That might please some of them,” she had said, “but not me. I like to feel that I am a real soldier. There’s a sort of comradeship that comes from standing in line with your mess kit and cup, the boys joshing one another, and all that. It’s real fun. At first,” she laughed, “they sort of leave you a space by yourself—as if you were poison, or perhaps were made of fragile stuff.”
“But after that?” he grinned.
“After that they find out we’re real fellows, and take us in. That makes me feel all sort of good inside.”
“The other night,” she had laughed, “they started doing a goose-step, with hands on shoulders. At first there was no hand on my shoulder. Then there was, and I did the goose-step with the best of them.”
“That’s the spirit!” the colonel had enthused. “That’s the sort of thing that took my little band of boys and girls out of Burma. Comradeship! There’s nothing like it!”
There was no goose-step on this night. The boys were a sober lot. Perhaps the air battle of the day had warned them that big events were just ahead.