“No,” thoughtfully. “That isn’t it. I can stand that all right. I can even stand to see Kahl and the rest of those fellows get knocked off. I suppose I could even stand it to get killed myself. You don’t make such a hell of a fuss when you get killed. But it seems so damned ridiculous. Take our going over the other day. A full battalion starting off and not even a fifth of them coming back. And what did they do? What did we do? We never even saw a German. They just laid up there and picked us off—direct hits with their artillery every time! That’s hell, ... you know. Think of being sent out to get killed, and the person who sends you not knowing where you’re going! It looks crazy. Like goin’ up to the Kaiser and saying: ‘Here, chop my head off.’ And I was talking to a Frog to-day, a Frog that gave me some coffee, and he said that this damned thing might keep up for years. Now, it’d be all right if we could go up and clean things up with one big smash, but it’s pretty mean when you go up and come back, go up and come back, until you get knocked off. Gimme another drink. “And Jack, you know that Frog I was tellin’ you about? When he gave me the coffee he asked me if I was an American. I guess he thought at first that I was an Englishman, and when I told him I wasn’t he looked sort of glad. Then he looked as if he expected me to agree with him and said that the Englishmen were no good.” “Well, you did, didn’t you? I’d like to take a crack at them lime-juicers.” “What difference does that make? The point is, the French hate the English and the English hate the Americans and the Americans hate the Germans, and where the hell is it all goin’ to end? Gimme another drink. “I guess that fellow being killed this afternoon got on my nerves,” he finished. Hicks drank until he was drunk, not sickeningly drunk, but until his brain was numbed. Pugh sat awake, watching the stars through the trees and listening to one of the new men singing low some Italian love-songs that he had learned in Rome. * * * * * The battalion slept until noon. When they awoke, the field kitchens, drawn up not far from them, were concocting the rations into that particular delicacy known to army folk as slum. The men fell in line before the large metal containers, where soiled-looking ragamuffins slopped a pale, watery substance into the dirty mess-kits that were held out by the men as they passed. The bread was white, there was much coffee that was hot. Further than that the desires of the men did not wing. * * * * * Late afternoon found the battalion on the road again, bound farther from the front. They knew that they were leaving the front by the receding boom of the artillery.