“Put away your overcoats and get out your mess kits.”
Mess kits clattered and gleamed in the slanting rays of the sun. They marched to the mess hall and back again, lined up again with packs and waited some more.
Everybody began to get tired and peevish. Fuselli wondered where his old friends of the other company were. They were good kids too, Chris and that educated fellow, Andrews. Tough luck they couldn't have come along.
The sun rose higher. Men sneaked into the barracks one by one and lay down on the bare cots.
“What you want to bet we won't leave this camp for a week yet?” asked someone.
At noon they lined up for mess again, ate dismally and hurriedly. As Fuselli was leaving the mess hall tapping a tattoo on his kit with two dirty finger nails, the corporal spoke to him in a low voice.
“Be sure to wash yer kit, buddy. We may have pack inspection.”
The corporal was a slim yellow-faced man with a wrinkled skin, though he was still young, and an arrow-shaped mouth that opened and shut like the paper mouths children make.
“All right, corporal,” Fuselli answered cheerfully. He wanted to make a good impression. “Fellers'll be sayin' 'All right, corporal,' to me soon,” he thought. An idea that he repelled came into his mind. The corporal didn't look strong. He wouldn't last long overseas. And he pictured Mabe writing Corporal Dan Fuselli, O.A.R.D.5.
At the end of the afternoon, the lieutenant appeared suddenly, his face flushed, his trench coat stiffer than ever.
“All right, sergeant; line up your men,” he said in a breathless voice.
All down the camp street companies were forming. One by one they marched out in columns of fours and halted with their packs on. The day was getting amber with sunset. Retreat sounded.
Fuselli's mind had suddenly become very active. The notes of the bugle and of the band playing “The Star Spangled Banner” sifted into his consciousness through a dream of what it would be like over there. He
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