Hicks awakened and cautiously sat up, his head peeping over the top of his burrow. Close enough to be touched a body, the legs spread wide, the chin raised high, and the chest slightly puffed, offered its belly to the sun. Hicks stiffly got out and looked at the body. “By God, they did come close all right,” he breathed.
Hicks walked over to the helmet. Like an inexperienced surgeon prodding a wound, he touched at the helmet, finally discovering on the leather cover of the padding the initials “W. O. P.” As he straightened he felt a deep pity, a great sorrow. “I used to cuss him a lot and he was an awful bonehead, but he was a pretty good fellow.”
Weighted down by two large food containers, four men made their way, stumbling and cursing, into the patch of woods. Seeing no one but Hicks, one angrily called: “Hey, you guys, don’t you want no chow?”
Out of nowhere a group of perhaps twenty-five men gathered around the pails of food.
“All right, you guys, snap it up. We can’t wait here all day. Quit fingerin’ your noses and grab your mess kits.”
Another man, resting from carrying the heavy stuff, started forth:
“Oh, the infantry and the cavalry
And the dirty engineers,
They couldn’t lick the leathernecks