“No. Only you’d better hurry up and join them or you’ll be up for a shoot for desertion.” “Why, whaddya mean? Where are they?” Several men spoke at once. “Well,” said the orderly importantly, “they were getting ready to go over the top when I left.” “Great Christ!” Ryan lamented. “We’d better hurry. Lead the way, orderly.” Flanked by rows of waving wheat, the party plodded along the dusty, narrow road. “Now we are in it for sure,” Hicks thought. “And me especially. If Major Adams hears about this I’ll be hung higher than a kite.” But he forgot the possibility of a court martial in his thinking of the platoon and of where they were and of where he was soon to be. The platoon was found in a clump of woods, a little to the left of the road. In front of them was the spectacle of what a French village looked like after it had been subjected to long-range artillery fire for three days. The spire of the inevitable little church had been blown off; there was not a house or barn whose side or roof had not been pierced by a shell. Mortar and glass were strewn about the streets, where they mingled with articles of household use. Beside the door of one of the houses a Red Cross flag had been fastened, and inside the medical detachment were making preparations for visitors. Old King Cole sat hunched up, his helmet over his eyes, looking down at his heavy shoes. Kahl, a light-weight boxer from Pennsylvania, was attacking a tin of corned beef, trying to open it with his bayonet. Wormrath, from Cleveland, who carried a khaki-colored handkerchief which he had used for three months, sat with his arms around his knees, his eyes looking far away and moist. “What’s the matter, King?” Hicks called, anxious somehow to make himself again a part of the platoon as soon as he could. “Oh, this damned war makes me sick. Always movin’ around. They never let you stay one place a minute.” “Join the marines and see the world,” some one called. “Through the door of a box car,” some one else amended. “You’ll be up here long enough, old fellow. You ought to come from my part of the country, King. They do a lot of cutting and shooting there.” “Yeh.” King Cole was ironic. “They do a lot of cuttin’ and shootin’. They cut around the corner and shoot for home.” Kahl laughed exultantly. He felt that at last the time he had given to training was to be of some purpose. He abandoned trying to open the tin of meat because he feared that he would dull his bayonet. And he wanted it to be sharp, so sharp. Those dirty Huns. He drew his finger along the edge of the shiny piece of steel. That would cut, all right. That wouldn’t be deflected by a coat-button from piercing the intestines. Lieutenant Bedford, bent forward as usual, the end of his nose wiggling nervously, came among them with Sergeants Ryan and Harriman.