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I'll say so!" was the laughing reply. "Wow! There'd be somethin' doin' at home then, wouldn't there?" my friend the artillery captain said with a grin. But about the funniest thing I heard along the sunshine-producing line was not in France but coming home from France, on the transport. It came from a prisoner on the transport who was sentenced to fifteen years for striking a top-sergeant.
Then he ceased to see and began only to feel. Whatever the row was about, they weren't fighting fairly, and his blood began to rise. He stood it as long as he could; then, with a cry of protest, he plunged through the crowd. In his sternest top-sergeant voice he issued orders, and enforced them with a brawny fist that was used to handling men.
Instead, Bruce had preferred to stroll out in search of friends. Top-Sergeant Mahan, by the way, would have felt highly flattered had he chanced to get a glimpse of the dispatch Bruce had brought to the colonel. For it bore out Mahan's own theory regarding the presence of spies at or near the village, and it bade the "Here-We-Come" colonel use every means for tracing them.
"Yes, it's an easy enough trade to pick up," lectured Top-Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army. "You've just got to remember a few things. But you've got to keep on remembering those few, all the time. If you forget one of 'em, it's the last bit of forgetting you're ever likely to do."
And the top-sergeant so far abetted the breach of discipline as to give the collie's head a furtive pat. The night was dim, as the moon had not risen; so the mutual contact of good-fellowship was not visible to the marching men on either side of Mahan and the dog. And discipline, therefore, did not suffer much, after all.
Again we sat waiting. Finally it occurred to us to go inside the little taverne, where, perhaps, we should be less conspicuous. We went in, and presently we were followed by Lieutenant Mittendorfer, he bringing with him a tall young top-sergeant of infantry who carried his left arm in a sling and had a three weeks' growth of fuzzy red beard on his chops.
"The same lazy guy that will stick you into the hoosgow for insubordination and leave you to do your bit there while the rest of us stroll on to Berlin!" snapped Top-Sergeant Mahan, wheeling upon the grumbler. "Till you learn how to obey orders without grouching, it isn't up to you to knock wiser men. Shut up!"
The top-sergeant permitted himself the luxury of a broad grin. "I'll buy Vivier all the red-ink wine he can gargle, next pay-day!" he vowed. "He was dead right about the dog. No bullet was ever molded that can get " Mahan broke off in his exultation, with an explosive oath, as a new note in the firing smote upon his trained hearing. "The swine!" he roared.
Otherwise, things were drowsily dull. In a dugout sprawled Top-Sergeant Mahan, formerly of Uncle Sam's regular army, playing an uninspiring game of poker with Sergeant Dale of his company and Sergeant Vivier of the French infantry. The Frenchman was slow in learning poker's mysteries.
Then about ten o'clock I saw my second lieutenant fall. Then early in the afternoon my top-sergeant got a bayonet, and a hand-grenade got a group of my non-commissioned officers. Half of my boys are gone." Then he sat down and we got him some hot chocolate. This seemed to revive his spirits, and he said: "But, thank God, we licked them! We licked them at their own game!
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