“Heard they’re right near Souilly. Believe they’ll hang there a day or so and then go into the lines. Big stuff on up here. Heard about it?”
“Lot of rumors ’bout a big smash, but nothin’ certain. What dope did you get?” asked Jimmy.
“Nothin’ but that everybody from the big guys down are looking for a drive to start and go through to Metz. Dope is we start the push on early in September, about the tenth or so. ’Ain’t got any too much time.”
“Guess we’ll be right up in the front end of this thing. Better get us some new chevaux. I’m tired listening to that ‘Cannoneer on the Wheel,’ stuff,” snorted Rigney.
“If it’ll end this guerre any quicker I’m with ’em to drive all winter,” declared Jimmy.
O. D. listened to his new friends talk about driving and pushing, and many other things that happen only at the front, with the feeling that he was a rank outsider in their company. They spoke so casually of attacking the Germans and taking Metz that O. D. could not dissuade himself from believing that at times war must be a sort of picnic. Yet something told him that while these men spoke as lightly as they did of fighting they knew the hell of it, too. He wondered again and again if when it came his time to learn, as they had done before him, he would be able to accept the fun and hell just as they did. That thought worried O. D. more than anything else.
“How far is that place where you think the outfit is?” asked old Pop Rigney. The five kilometers that brought them to another little village had brought some aches and weariness to his aging limbs.
“Another kilometer or two, I guess,” answered Joyce.
“Better grab a truck. You don’t know where we’re going,” was Rigney’s suggestion.
“Gosh! There’s a Y. M. C. A. sign. Let’s go over and get some cigarettes. No tellin’ if we’ll ever see them again. Gettin’ up close now, you know,” warned Jimmy.