CHAPTER II
SOLDIER
On the afternoon of the following day, the company is detailed for barrack drill. We are lying on our stomachs in the barrack-yard, and are being drilled in taking aim and firing lying down.
I have just been sighting.
In front of me on the barrack wall over there they have painted targets. Ring targets, head targets, chest targets. Three hundred yards. I take pointblank aim, and press the trigger. "Square in the chest." That ought to count as a bull's-eye.
Wonder how many clips of cartridges am I going to get through?
Wonder if there will be a bull's-eye among them?
If every man of those millions they are putting into the field against the enemy fires about a hundred cartridges, and there is one bull's-eye in every hundred, that works out at ... that amounts to ... and I can't help smiling at this neat sum in arithmetic ... then the answer is no one at all. That is a merry sum.
Snick!
The fifth cartridge tumbles out.