Gabby is a little puzzled by Fat's moustache, but only for a second.
"Whatever became of Charley Rose," he asks, "and Bill Lyman, and all the rest of them?"
"For the love of Mike—meeting you in this forsaken spot after all this time! Where are you stationed? Can't we stage a reunion? Can't we, Fat?"
Well, Fat is a sergeant-chauffeur, Q.M.C. Gabby is a doughboy in an infantry regiment. They can't get together. They're at the War.
For the next ten minutes a whole battlefield of Boche fliers might have sneaked past the Chicago sentry and bombed the daylights out of Division Headquarters without any hindrance from Gabby.
Charley Rose, says Fat, is an infantry lieutenant. Maury Dunne's in the heavy artillery. Dan McCarthy, the hopeless but untiring "sub" of the 1911 squad, is in France in the Q.M.C.
"Well, doggone!" says Fat, in wonderment at the littleness of the world. "Well, gee whiz!" says Gabby, thinking the same thing.
You'll meet 'em all over here—your old rivals, your staunchest pals. You may find yourself top sergeant over the very kids you stole apples or milk bottles with back in the "good old days." Perhaps you'll be saluting the fellow who cut you out of your girl back in high school when an exchange of class pins with pretty Frances Black meant that you were engaged to her for that semester.
Somewhere in France, they're all here.