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‘Hush. Let him alone. Don’t you see he don’t remember himself? Do you reckon you would, with that scar? Let the war be. Hey, Lootenant?’

‘I don’t know. Another drink is better.’

‘Sure it is. Buck up, General. He don’t mean no harm. He’s just got to let her ride as she lays for a while. We all got horrible memories of the war. I lose eighty-nine dollars in a crap game once, besides losing, as that wop writer says, that an’ which thou knowest at Chatter Teary. So how about a little whisky, men?’

‘Cheer-O,’ said the officer again.

‘What do you mean, Chateau Thierry?’ said Lowe, boyish in disappointment, feeling that he had been deliberately ignored by one to whom Fate had been kinder than to himself.

‘You talking about Chatter Teary?’

‘I’m talking about a place you were not at, anyway.’

‘I was there in spirit, sweetheart. That’s what counts.’

‘You couldn’t have been there any other way. There ain’t any such place.’

‘Hell there ain’t! Ask the Loot here if I ain’t right. How about it, Loot?’