he thought No one is interested in it, abstractly, except soldiers and there are not many soldiers. You make them and the good ones are killed, and above they are always bucking for something so hard they never look or listen. They are always thinking of what they have seen and while you are talking they are thinking of what they will say and what it may lead to in their advancement or their privilege. There was no sense boring this boy, who, for all his combat infantryman badge, his Purple Heart and the other things he wore, was in no sense a soldier but only a man placed, against his will, in uniform, who had elected to remain in the army for his own ends.
“What did you do in civil life, Jackson?” he asked.
“I was partners with my brother in a garage in Rawlins, Wyoming, sir.”
“Are you going back there?”
“My brother got killed in the Pacific and the guy who was running the garage was no good,” the driver said. “We lost what we had put in it.”
“That’s bad,” the Colonel said.
“You’re God-damned right it’s bad,” the driver said and added, “sir.”
The Colonel looked up the road.
He knew that if they kept on this road they would come, shortly, to the turn that he was waiting for; but he was impatient.
“Keep your eyes open and take a left hand turn on the road leading off this pike,” he told the driver.
“Do you think those low roads will be good with this big car, sir?”
