“Guess we’ll get soaked, O. D.,” prophesied Jimmy when they halted and got a chance to observe the weather conditions.
“Will we stay here now?” asked O. D.
“Oui. Might just as well scare up a place to cushay. Wait here; I’ll look ’round.”
A little while later Jimmy returned with the news that there was nothing to do but put the pup tent up again and sleep on the ground.
“There’s one barrack here, but the First Battalion guys grabbed that as they got here first,” he explained.
Jimmy and O. D. put the tent up on the slope of a hill that formed the eastern side of the valley in which the horses and matériel of the entire regiment were hidden.
O. D. heard, in a sort of indifferent manner, the growl of big guns that seemed very near. He was startled once or twice by the crash of bombs and the anti-air-craft guns. But he was too tired to lend ears and thoughts to such things on his first night at the front, for the regiment was only a few kilometers from the first lines. O. D. fell asleep immediately and didn’t wake until three hours later when a downpour of rain splashed him from head to foot.
The wind that accompanied the rain swept the tent away time and time again. Everything that Jimmy and O. D. owned got soaked. The earth beneath them turned into crawling slime. Finally, seeing the impossibility of keeping the tent up, Jimmy told his friend to pull his shelter-half over him, head and all. Jimmy did likewise with his shelter-half and blankets. The two boys, wrapped in canvas and blankets, lay in the deluge like two muffled mummies, trying to sleep.
Instead of moving into position at once the regiment made at least fifty final preparations to do so, only to be ordered to remain in the valley for further orders.
Four days passed. Rain fell incessantly. The bottom of the valley became as slippery as glass. Men bogged up to their knees in mud. There were no boots. The mess was a succession of “corned willy,” hardtack, and sugarless coffee meals.