Leon harbored thoughts of murder every time he saw Lowery start his nightly ceremony of rubbing and pinching, and there wasn’t any way of avoiding it, because the afflicted man never turned in until last call and the sergeant would have blasted Leon’s soul to seven vari-colored hells if he weren’t in his blankets when the lights went out. “It’s a terrible thing, young feller!” Lowery informed him after they had slept side by side for some days, but the information didn’t make Leon feel any more sympathetic nor less sickened. Yet Lowery’s toes were nothing in comparison with the sergeant, who seemed from the first to have his evil eye on Leon. “Canwick,” he would begin, as if he were about to confer a great honor, “somebody has got to go an’ help take care o’ the bathhouse to-day, and seein’ the drillin’ wears ya out so, I guess you’d better take to-day off and report over there. Ya see, we try to make everything as easy as possible fer everybody and also we try to teach every man somethin’ worth while so that when ya get out ya can get a decent livin’. Now this bathhouse detail will teach ya so you can get a job in a Turkish bath when ya get out o’ the army.... You’d go big in a Turkish bath fer women—ya know, they gotta have somebody’s perfectly safe and harmless.” Everyone laughed at the insinuation and Leon hurried away to the new assignment, thinking that perhaps after all this work would be a little easier, only to discover that his duties were anything but pleasant for a tender-spirited person, what with having to scour pipes and scrub the concrete, pick up dirty discarded towels and other unclean things, distribute soap and collect slimy cakes, and watch the conglomerate mass of male humanity perform its ablutions amid a veritable barrage of dirty language and foul wit.... He was glad to be relieved and to let his legs ache the next day when an apparently indefatigable officer drilled them for hours and hours. His back and legs groaned in agony at every step and when he went to bed at night he wasn’t at all sure he would be able to get up in the morning. He had another honor conferred on him when the humorous sergeant extended a polite invitation to him to join the Kitchen Police for a few days o’ rest. Leon told us that until that day he never had the least conception of how many potatoes there were in the world. He peeled and peeled and peeled until he felt certain there couldn’t be any more potatoes in the country—but the next morning there was a brand-new batch even larger than the one he had done. His fingers got so numb that he couldn’t feel the thousand and one cuts and scratches, and his wrists ached unmercifully while his back had a kink that seemed irremovable. After two days of this he returned to his bunk to find Lowery working on his toes and he prayed, not for Lowery’s toes, but that he might be lucky enough to draw the dishwashing detail on the morrow.