," he'd like to know where
it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain,
rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes.
And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and
more mud, and more drill. And then--into it!

Into it with both feet. Living in the trenches. Back home, in camp, they
had refused to take the trenches seriously. They had played in them as
children play bear under the piano or table, and had refused to keep
their heads down. But Buzz learned to keep his down now, quickly enough.
A first terrifying stretch of this, then back to the rear again. More
mud and drill. Marches so long and arduous that walking was no longer
walking but a dreadful mechanical motion. He learned what thirst was,
did Buzz. He learned what it was to be obliged to keep your mind off the
thought of pails of water--pails that slopped and brimmed over, so that
you could put your head into them and lip around like a horse.

Then back into the trenches. And finally, over the top! Very little
memory of what happened after that. A rush. Trampling over soft heaps
that writhed. Some one yelling like an Indian with a voice somehow like
his own. The German trench reached. At them with his bayonet! He
remembered, automatically, how his manual had taught him to jerk out the
steel, after you had driven it home. He did it. Into the very trench
itself. A great six-foot German struggling with a slim figure that Buzz
somehow recognised as his lieutenant, Hatton. A leap at him, like an
enraged dog:

"G'wan! who you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to
say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his
grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz
laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then
something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had
thrown his last bomb, and it had struck home.

Buzz Werner would never again do a double shuffle on Schroeder's
drug-store corner.

Hospital days. Hospital nights. A wheel chair. Crutches. Home.

It was May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little
red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his
uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at
his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one.
As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching
the town p