“Oui, but say la guerre. Gotta get used to that stuff, I guess,” and he nearly drained the canteen. “Smoke?” he asked, pulling out a package of bruised Lucky Strikes.
“No, thanks.”
“You’ll get the habit after you’ve been up with us awhile. Nothin’ like a cigarette, boy, in them damp dugouts when you’re waitin’ for some party to come off.”
After the old blue smoke began to issue from his mouth and nostrils Jimmy felt a bit talkative.
“So you goin’ to be an artilleryman, eh?”
“Yes; but the funny thing is that I’m an infantryman—that is, they trained me in that kind of stuff. I never was on a horse in my life. Never saw a real cannon, either,” answered O. D.
“Can that stuff. You don’t need to know anythin’ about ridin’ a horse in this man’s army. I joined the artillery to keep from walkin’ and I’ve been walkin’ most of the time since I enlisted. We never saw a cannon, except those pea-shooters we had back in the States, until we hit France. Just goes to show how this army’s bein’ run. They send you up to the artillery and you were trained for infantry. Soon they’ll be sendin’ up submarine-chasers for caissons,” declared McGee.
“Say, Jimmy, wish you’d tell me something about the front, so I’ll know how to act when I get there,” pleaded O. D.
“Ah, forget that front idea. You’ll never know the difference—unless, of course, you get a fistfull of shrapnel in the face or a bellyful of gas. Course, that makes it different.”
“Shrapnel! Gas! Gee, those are bad actors up there, I heard. Is it raining shrapnel all the time, and does the gas come over every day, or what?” asked O. D. kind of hopelessly.