“Hicks, you were reported this morning to have gone to sleep while on outpost duty.” Hicks started visibly. “That’s true, sir.” “Well, what the hell kind of a soldier are you, anyway?” Major Adams fairly bit his words loose. “I don’t know, sir. I mean, I guess I’ve been a pretty good soldier.” “You have like hell, Hicks, and you know it. Now, why did you go to sleep on watch?” Hicks knew that if he were court-martialled his sentence might be life imprisonment. It might be anything, he reflected, that the group of morons sitting in solemn judgment might decide to give him. Major Adams also knew it. “Sir, the hours are too long. Nobody can stay awake when he goes on watch eight hours every night.” “Yes?” Major Adams raised an eyebrow forbiddingly. “Well, sir, there’s two feet of water in the shell hole where my post is, and I guess I got so numb with cold that I went to sleep.” “And you never thought to bail it out? I knew that officers were so damned dumb that they needed dog-robbers, but I didn’t know that enlisted men were. Now, Hicks, you haven’t a case at all. But”—he was silent a moment—“some day you might make a good soldier. You wouldn’t have a chance if you were to get a general court martial, because the judges would have you hung as an example. Hicks,” he said, “I’m going to let this drop. You may go.” Mumbling a “thank you, sir,” Hicks very properly about-faced and left the dugout. IV The platoon had been in the trenches for about six weeks. Everything had been quiet, well-ordered. Occasionally a shell from the German batteries would start lazily off and end up with terrific speed in the platoon’s trench. Once or twice men were killed when the shells struck, and their bodies were hurried away to the dressing station; one morning the body of a red-haired German, an immense fellow with a broad forehead, large wide eyes, and a huge mouth, was found fastened to the strands of barbed wire in front of Hicks’s post. There was a hole in his side made by the explosion of a small hand-bomb. Besides that, there was nothing of interest. In fact, there was too little of interest. Not even a prisoner had been taken, although the colonel of the regiment had let it be known that the first man to capture a prisoner would be given a fifteen-days leave to Aix-le-Bains. So it was decided that a raiding party was what was needed to resuscitate the platoon from its lethargy. It was for this reason that when Hicks and Bullis set out through the trench toward their shell hole one night they were stopped by the lieutenant and told that they had been relieved for the night and were to return to their dugout and await his orders.