“Okay, so you’re a hero,” Kopeck said lightly. “You’re a fighting man. Tell me one thing, though, John. Did you personally shoot this gun in combat?”

“Whadda you think?” Fallon said through thin, unmoving lips.

“How many times?”

The fact of the matter was that Fallon, as a husky and competent soldier of nineteen, many times pronounced “a damn good B.A.R. man” by the others in his squad, had carried his weapon on blistered feet over miles of road and field and forest in the last two months of the war, had lain with it under many artillery and mortar barrages and jabbed it at the chests of many freshly taken German prisoners; but he’d had occasion to fire it only twice, at vague areas rather than men, had brought down nothing either time, and had been mildly reprimanded the second time for wasting ammunition.

“Nunnya goddamn business how many!” he said, and the others looked down at their plates with ill-concealed smiles. He glared at them, defying anyone to make a crack, but the worst part of it was that none of them said anything. They ate or drank their beer in silence, and after a while they changed the subject.