A few weeks after their arrival in the camp, when their straw mattresses had flattened out and their rifles were beginning to speckle with rust from the dew, there was a funny incident in one of the squad tents. A buck sergeant named Myron Phelps, who was thirty-three but looked much older, and who had been a soft-coal miner in civilian life, delicately tapped the ash from a big PX cigar and said, “Ah, I wish you kids’d quit talking about Germany. I’m tired of all this Germany, Germany, Germany.” Then he stretched out on his back, causing his flimsy cot to wobble on the uneven earth. He folded one arm under his head to suggest a world of peace, using the other to gesture lazily with the cigar. “I mean what the hell would you be doing if you was in Germany? Huh? Well, you’d be out getting laid and getting the clap and getting the syphilis and getting the blue balls, that’s all, and you’d be drinking up all that schnapps and beer and getting soft and getting out of shape. Right? Right? Well, if you ask me, this here is a whole lot better. We got fresh air, we got shelter, we got food, we got discipline. This is a man’s life.”