“Goin’ to fight the Germans.”

Hefty had hooted hoarsely:  “Ya-a-as you are, you big bluff!”

“Who you callin’ a bluff, you baggage-smasher, you!  I’m goin’ to war, I’m tellin’ you.”

Hefty, still scoffing, turned away to his work.  “Well, then, I guess it’s as good as over.  Give old Willie a swipe for me, will you?”

“You bet I will.  Watch me!”

I think he more than half meant it.

And thus Buzz Werner went to war.  He was vague about its locality.  Somewhere in Europe.  He was pretty sure it was France.  A line from his Fourth Grade geography came back to him.  “The French,” it had said, “are a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines.”

Well, that sounded all right.

The things that happened to Buzz Werner in the next twelve months cannot be detailed here.  They would require the space of what the publishers call a 12-mo volume.  Buzz himself could never have told you.  Things happened too swiftly, too concentratedly.

Chicago first.  Buzz had never seen Chicago.  Now that he saw it, he hardly believed it.  His first glimpse of it left him cowering, terrified.  The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness, were like blows upon his defenceless head.  They beat the braggadocio and the self-confidence temporarily out of him.  But only temporarily.

Then came a camp.  A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present cantonments are luxurious.  The United States Government took Buzz Werner by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him thus, shook him into shape—­and into submission.  And eventually—­though it required months—­into an understanding of why that submission was manly, courageous, and fine.  But before he learned that he learned many other things.  He learned there was little good in saying, “Aw, g’wan!” to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house for saying it.  There was little point to throwing down your shovel and refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out.  He 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.