Hicks, at times, would think of a letter that his mother had written him in which she had offered to send him a quantity of cyanide of potassium. “You know, son,” she had written, “this war is not like the war that grandpapa used to tell you about. Those frightful Germans have liquid fire and deadly gases, and it is only when I think of how you would suffer if you were burned by their infernal liquid fire that I offer to send it. If you want it, just mark a cross at the bottom of your next letter.” But Hicks had not marked any cross. He had laughed at the notion at first, and then, as the months slipped by, he had forgotten entirely about it. Now he wondered if he had done wisely. Suppose he were shot like the fellow in the trench the other day? Or gassed as badly as the Frenchman whom he and Pugh had carried back to the first-aid station. Yes, it would have been comforting.... But he revolted at the thought of poisoning himself. His early religion had been that a suicide does not better his condition. He simply lives in purgatory. It would be hellish to lie gasping forever in purgatory, Hicks thought. Dear old mother. How she had cried when he told her that he had enlisted and was to be sent almost immediately to France. “But, mother, you were such a good patriot before I enlisted, and now you don’t want me to go. What kind of patriotism is that?” he remembered having asked her. And how badly she had felt that he only spent an hour with her before he left for the training camp. He was amused at the notion of digging holes to lie in. It is insulting, he thought, to ask a person to dig his own grave. It is barbaric. The leaves of the trees were silvered above by the rays of the sun playing upon the dew. Morning had come. Somewhere—and it seemed as if it were only ten yards away, a bugle blew a short and unfamiliar call. “All right, Third Platoon!” Lieutenant Bedford’s voice was hoarse with excitement. “Forward, Third Platoon.” Hesitatingly and half-whimpering, the platoon climbed out from their holes, over which they had carefully placed boughs of trees to keep reconnoitering airplanes from seeing the freshly dug dirt. Hicks’s helmet felt as if it were about to come off. It wabbled from one side to the other. His face was frozen, and when he wanted to speak out he felt that he could not because the muscles that controlled his mouth refused to respond. At first he was intensely aware of his legs, but, surging along with the rest of the platoon, he soon forgot them. Three Germans were rising up in front of him. “Don’t those queer little caps of theirs look funny?” he thought, and, from the hip, he fired his automatic rifle at them. One fell and the others lifted their hands in the air and bellowed: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” Hicks passed by them, unheeding. More Germans. The woods were filled with Germans. But the rest of them wore heavy steel helmets that covered their foreheads and ears. “You dirty bastards!” Hicks heard some one scream.