Exultant, the man left his place and strutted over to the sergeant. Taking a position before one of the dummies, he proceeded to show the rest of the platoon how really and frightfully to stab the dummies until their stuffing broke through the sacks.
“He’s working to be a corporal, the dirty scut. And oh, if he does get to be a two-striper won’t he make us step around. Boy!” Hicks muttered to Pugh, who was standing next to him and whose bayonet had failed even to pierce the covering of the sack.
“He won’t pull none of that old stuff on me. Ah’ll tell Lieutenant Bedford and he’ll make him be good or I won’t give him any more money to gamble with,” Pugh drawled.
“You sure have got a stand-in with Bedford, Pugh. I often wondered how you did it.”
“Hell, that’s easy. When he was down at St. Nazaire I lent him ’bout a thousand francs to gamble with, and he ain’t never paid me.”
The platoon assembled and marched back to their billets.
III
Three days were spent by the platoon at the little village. On the evening of the third day, just as the men had formed in a long, impatient line before the field kitchen, with their aluminum food receptacles held out to catch the thin, reddish stew surlily thrown at them, the company commander walked among them bearing words of dour import. Captain Powers talked softly and gently, wringing the words from his heart, burnishing them with a note of sadness: