“Did you take that one, Jimmy?”
“Oui.”
“Anything you do, old boy, is O. K. with me. You know that, Jimmy, don’t you?” asked the brother of Mary.
“Bet I do, O. D. Funny how guys get to be pals up here, ain’t it! Back in the States you and me would have passed each other up, most likely. Out here it’s mighty darn different. Makes a fellow get down under the skin of things. I feel like I’ve known you all my life, O. D.”
“So do I, Jimmy. I never knew any fellow as good as I’ve come to know you.”
“Well, when men get close to dyin’ with each other, when they’ve starved side by side and damn near froze to death under the same pieces of cheesecloth, it ain’t any wonder that they find out who and what each other is. Do you know, it’s gettin’ colder every night? We’ve got to rustle up some more coverin’ soon or we’ll pass out one of these nights. It’s that cold mud underneath us that puts ice in the bones. Look here, O. D., don’t you wake up in the night no more and listen to me talk in my sleep ’bout cold and put your coat over me. Keep it on your side. I’m more used to this stuff than you,” commanded Jimmy.
“I wasn’t cold, Jimmy, honest. Think I’ll turn over and cushay a while. We ’ain’t slept in forty-eight hours now. There won’t be anything to monjay tonight; stuff got in too late for supper. Goin’ to give us some coffee and stuff ’round nine o’clock.”
“Well, we’ll both crawl in and knock out some sleep,” said Jimmy, and they got under their thin dirt-spattered blankets and fell into sound slumber with no effort.
Three hours later Jimmy and O. D. were throttled out of their sleep by the banging of incoming shells and the quaking of earth that shivered and shook as the shells ripped great smoking holes in its sides.
Between the bangs and the crashes they caught the piping of the whistle that called them to the pits. Twenty seconds later Sergeant Dick Dennis, chief of Jimmy’s gun section, sang out to the executive officer, “Third section in order, sir.”