“He’s a son of a bitch.” Mannix morosely cupped his chin in his hands, blinking into space, at the bare canvas wall. He was chewing on the butt of a cigar. The glare seemed to accentuate a flat Mongoloid cast in his face; he looked surly and tough and utterly exhausted. Shivering, he pulled his field jacket closer around his neck, and then, as Culver watched, his face broke out into the comical, exasperated smile which always heralded his bitterest moments of outrage--at the Marine Corps, at the system, at their helpless plight, the state of the world--tirades which, in their unqualified cynicism, would have been intolerable were they not always delivered with such gusto and humor and a kind of grisly delight. “Thirty ... six ... _miles_,” he said slowly, his eyes alive and glistening, “_thirty ... six ... miles_! Christ on a crutch! Do you realize how far that is? Why that’s as far as it is from Grand Central to Stamford, Connecticut! Why, man, I haven’t walked a hundred consecutive yards since 1945. I couldn’t go thirty-six miles if I were sliding downhill the whole way on a sled. And a _forced_ march, mind you. You just don’t stroll along, you know. That’s like running. That’s a regulation two-and-a-half miles per hour with only a ten-minute break each hour. So H & S Company is fouled up. So maybe it is. He can’t take green troops like these and do that. After a couple of seven- or ten- or fifteen-mile conditioning hikes, maybe so. If they were young. And rested. Barracks-fresh. But this silly son of a bitch is going to have all these tired, flabby old men flapping around on the ground like a bunch of fish after the first two miles. Christ on a frigging crutch!” “He’s not a bad guy, Al,” Culver said, “he’s just a regular. Shot in the ass with the Corps. A bit off his nut, like all of them.”