learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a
dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an
olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so
sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from
limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with
a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went
through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded
them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim,
six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless,
merciless--a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between
thumb and finger--like that!--who made life a hell for Buzz Werner.
Until his muscles became used to it.

"One--_two_!--three! One--_two_--three! One--_two_--three!" yelled this
person. And, "_In_hale! _Ex_hale! _In_hale! _Ex_hale!" till Buzz's lungs
were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a
sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms,
neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached,
yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always
with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! _Whup_!" Buzz whupped with
the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz
felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant
would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he
wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet
with sweat.

So much for his body. It soon became accustomed to the routine, then
hardened. His mind was less pliable. But that, too, was undergoing a
change. He found that the topics of conversation that used to interest
his little crowd on the street corner in Chippewa were not of much
interest, here. There were boys from every part of the great country.
And they talked of the places whence they had come and speculated about
the places to which they were going. And Buzz listened and learned.
There was strangely little talk about girls. There usually is when
muscles and mind are being driven to the utmost. But he heard men--men
as big as he--speak openly of things that he had always sneered at as
soft. After one of these conversations he wrote an awkward, but
significant scrawl home to his mother.

"Well Ma," he wrote, "I guess maybe you would l