In the dark Hicks and Pugh found a place where the grass was thickest. They spread out their blankets and lay down. Pugh was restless, though his body was scourged with fatigue. His was the foraging spirit. There were no supply wagons in sight from which to pilfer, there were no field kitchens, with the cooks stewing a barely edible mess of tomatoes, beef-bones, potatoes, and onions. He got up and silently stole away. Less than an hour afterward he returned, his arms laden with bottles and condiments. He uncorked a bottle, placed the open end under Hicks’s nose, and gently shook him.
“Oh, Hicks, Hicksy, look what daddy’s got.”
Hicks awakened with a start, almost knocking the bottle from Pugh’s hand.
“Cognac?” Hicks greedily asked.
“Naw,” deprecatingly, “but it’s pretty good champagne.”
Hicks drank, passed the bottle to Pugh. The bottle played shuttlecock between them.
Suddenly Hicks felt impelled to talk.
“Jack, I’m all in. I feel sort of sick. I don’t believe I can go up to the front any more.”
“What’s the matter?” sympathetically. “These Big Berthas got you fooled?”
“No,” thoughtfully. “That isn’t it. I can stand that all right. I can even stand to see Kahl and the rest of those fellows get knocked off. I suppose I could even stand it to get killed myself. You don’t make such a hell of a fuss when you get killed. But it seems so damned ridiculous. Take our going over the other day. A full battalion starting off and not even a fifth of them coming back. And what did they do? What did we do? We never even saw a German. They just laid up there and picked us off—direct hits with their artillery every time! That’s hell, ... you know. Think of being sent out to get killed, and the person who sends you not knowing where you’re going! It looks crazy. Like goin’ up to the Kaiser and saying: ‘Here, chop my head off.’ And I was talking to a Frog to-day, a Frog that gave me some coffee, and he said that this damned thing might keep up for years. Now, it’d be all right if we could go up and clean things up with one big smash, but it’s pretty mean when you go up and come back, go up and come back, until you get knocked off. Gimme another drink.