To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [17]
He tried to flex his toes, felt them gripped tightly in a block of muddy cement.
“Why not?”
“Once they’ve been soaked like that, you’ll never get them back on again. Just wait a while, they’ll dissolve. Your socks’ll hold out a while longer. Last pair had to be cut out of my feet, a damned nurse picking at the pieces with a tweezers. Grew right into my skin. Inside of your boot just like some kind of chemistry lab. All manner of biology goes on in there. Best we don’t know. Ah . . . underwear. Different story. Can’t spare that. Don’t worry, the army’s good about delousing and generous with the underwear. We get pulled out of here, they won’t let us near civilization until we get stripped down and scrubbed. Amazing how a man’s dreams can narrow down to such simple luxury. Clean underwear.”
He was impressed with the man’s obvious experience, was feeling overwhelmed.
“How long have you been here?”
“This hole? Hell, I don’t know. One hole or another. Five, six months. They keep calling this a stalemate. Pretty damned stale, that’s for sure. Winter was pretty quiet, so we just stayed put. The lieutenant said they forgot about us. Could be. They sure as hell ought to forget about him. Green replacements are one thing. Green officers just get people killed. Graves showed up here sometime around Christmas, replaced Lieutenant Dunnigan. Good officer, that man. Killed on a night patrol. Right next to me.” He paused, knocked a piece of mud from his boot. “So then young Lieutenant Graves arrives in the middle of a snowstorm, and right away wants us to fall into formation, do some kind of drills, show him we’re real soldiers. Captain had to talk some sense into him, probably kept him alive.” He stopped, the smile gone. “Bother you, Greenie? Disrespecting my lieutenant? They don’t teach you anything about that in Blighty. They tell you all officers are geniuses, from Marshal Haig all the way down to this bloody jackass Graves. Here’s a military secret, Greenie. They lied.” He gathered his pack together, slid it back into the dugout. “Anything you need, let me know.”
The man’s words had filled him with curiosity, his mind filling with questions.
“You just stay right here? This trench? Seems mighty temporary.”
“It is, actually. This particular corner of hell has only been here for a month or so. We have to move every so often. Damned things just fill up with water. No way to drain them. This whole part of the world is just one big swamp. The water’s gotta go somewhere. You dig a hole, it’s gonna fill up. Some engineer finally figured out if you slope the bottom, the water might stay on one side. Works for a while, like right now. Won’t last. A good hard rain and this thing’ll fill up about waist-deep. Then they’ll move us again, if Fritz cooperates. We get pulled out of here every couple of months, spend a week in a rest area. Red Cross, YMCA centers. Actual women. Gods’s gift to the army. When I came up, the regiment was near full strength, never knew half the people in the company. Lieutenant Dunnigan had a full command, though about the time he got hit, we started losing men pretty regular. Fritz started this little artillery display every dawn, and damned if he didn’t drop at least one down our throats every damned time. Graves and the captain been screaming at the rear for replacements. The whole regiment is weak. Each company gets whatever they can send us. That’s where you come in.” He scratched at his stomach, seemed to drift away for a long moment, pinched hard at another tormenter under his shirt. “No more strangers in Company B. Know them all now. All twelve.” He looked up. “Thirteen.”
HE HAD CHOSEN ONE OF THE DUGOUTS AT RANDOM, AND DUKE