Hicks awakened and cautiously sat up, his head peeping over the top of his burrow. Close enough to be touched a body, the legs spread wide, the chin raised high, and the chest slightly puffed, offered its belly to the sun. Hicks stiffly got out and looked at the body. “By God, they did come close all right,” he breathed. Hicks walked over to the helmet. Like an inexperienced surgeon prodding a wound, he touched at the helmet, finally discovering on the leather cover of the padding the initials “W. O. P.” As he straightened he felt a deep pity, a great sorrow. “I used to cuss him a lot and he was an awful bonehead, but he was a pretty good fellow.” Weighted down by two large food containers, four men made their way, stumbling and cursing, into the patch of woods. Seeing no one but Hicks, one angrily called: “Hey, you guys, don’t you want no chow?” Out of nowhere a group of perhaps twenty-five men gathered around the pails of food. “All right, you guys, snap it up. We can’t wait here all day. Quit fingerin’ your noses and grab your mess kits.” Another man, resting from carrying the heavy stuff, started forth: “Oh, the infantry and the cavalry And the dirty engineers, They couldn’t lick the leathernecks In a hundred thousand years.” Pugh looked at him sourly. “You all wouldn’t be singin’ that if you’d been wi’ us las’ night. You musta been hidin’ in some dugout eatin’ up our rations.” “Who?” The man broke off, indignant. “Who? Who?” said Pugh. “Your feet don’t fit no limb.” “Who do you mean?”—incensed. “Oh, gwahn.” With their canteen cups the men dipped eagerly into the thick, brown, greasy fluid. “God, an’ it’s hot, too.” But for the most part they were silent. One man tasted of the concoction in the other receptacle. He began to retch horribly. Usually, the early afternoon was the period of the day’s recreation for the men in the ravine, an hour more favorable to their personal pursuits. Between the time when an attack might be expected and the diurnal four-o’clock German bombardment, the moment gave the platoon a chance once more to assume their normal existence. At such a time the guardians of the ravine would emerge from their burrows and, under the shade of an overhanging tree, try to recollect their thoughts.