If you weren’t sick when you started, you’d be sick by the time you got on deck, so you might just as well stay there and suffer.... It sure was one hell of a place. The only consolation I found in the situation lay in the realization that it would be so much more terrible if the occupants of this hell-hole were women instead of men: if a hundred women were jammed into a sweaty, stuffy place like that, there’d be no living there at all. And yet we were not so bad off as some others. Indeed we were rather lucky, because, whereas each troop unit was allowed on deck only during certain hours of the day and never after dusk, we were able to grab off a little air now and then in the course of our travels about our duties, for Ben was an orderly and Getterlow managed somehow to disappear whenever it came time for drills or other routine company rules. He was a wagoner—in other words, a chauffeur, so I didn’t see what excuse he could have for being absent from the company get-togethers. There couldn’t be much chauffeuring aboard a ship. However, leave it to a Jew to get away with murder. You have to hand it to them, as Ben said. I don’t mean to say that we didn’t suffer. Just one night was a lifetime of suffering, believe me. And during most of the day, this little hot-air pot was our chief domain and, except for our stolen and in-line-of-duty liberties, we remained there and suffered the trip as best we could—which was not very well, in the case of Esky, who found it rather close quarters for a healthy he-man of a dog. He was satisfied to stay put for a couple of days; that snowy journey to Camp about finished him; but soon he was full of pep and would have been on deck pronto if he hadn’t been so well trained that he didn’t know how to disobey my orders that he stay where he was. He sure was one fine pup. Everybody liked him and anyone who couldn’t finish his eats brought whatever he could carry back to Esky. Ben took a very paternal interest in him and a fiendish delight in hoodwinking the inspecting officers during the morning tour. As I was usually out at the time, Ben had to do the dirty work and take the risks. He would tuck Esky under my blanket roll when he heard the officers coming down the ladder into the compartment, and Esky stayed there without a wiggle, no matter how long he had to hold this uncomfortable position. It was so dark in there that the inspectors had to carry flash lights, and after the second morning, they didn’t bother to do more than look in the door, so Esky was safe. It would have been safe enough now to leave him under the bunk, but Ben said that as sure as we did, Chilblaines would come along on inspecting detail and “Dat rat’ll want to look in yer ears even!” So far, Chilblaines had failed to appear.