It was hilarious the first time Kennet saw a tank gunner clinging to the turret, pants around his shins, hanging on for dear life as he relieved himself on the run. But after watching a dozen such scatological feats, it became no more novel than the sunrise. You marched behind the tank treads, stepped over corpses, trudged through the shit and thought nothing of it.

Paps, the history books won’t mention it, Kennet wrote, but man-to-man, the war does indeed smell like shit. And while I appreciate heck out of the care packages the girls send, if you, man-to-man, could go down to the corner drug and buy every can of Gold Bond Medicated Powder that will fit in a box and ship it to me, I guarantee more than a few fighting fellows would thank you from the bottom of their…bottoms. Ha ha.

“It’s too cold to wipe your ass,” was a familiar Army refrain. Not that there was much to wipe with anyway. Some men used snow, not out of concern for hygiene, but because after months of C-rations, dubious water, crapping in absurd conditions without a square of toilet paper, and occasionally shitting your pants out of sheer fright, the crack of your goddamn ass was its own war zone. It itched and burned until you wanted to shoot yourself. Snow helped numb the torment. A little. You tried not to scratch, but sometimes it was scratch or go mad. Then you tried not to put your disgusting fingers anywhere near your mouth, but at the rate they were all chain-smoking, who the hell knew what ended up in their guts, leaving them squatting miserably on the trail and perpetuating the itchy cycle.

Since December, two guys in Kennet’s company had been invalided out because of hemorrhoids. How the hell did you explain that to the folks back home with any dignity? It kind of made you grateful for mere burning itch. Sometimes. There was nothing for it anyway, except pray the next village had a chemist shop that sold any kind of magic relief and until you got there, fantasize about the day you returned to your own throne.

“When I get home,” Jock said, as the squad gathered around a small fire, having their last smokes. “I’m spending a day in the bathroom. I mean it. I’ll sit on the crapper until my legs fall asleep.”

“I’m going to flush the toilet a hundred times,” Ingle said dreamily.

“I’m taking a six-hour shower,” Kennet said.

“I’m filling the tub to the brim with hot water,” Schmitt said. “I’ll use every goddamn bottle of bath junk my wife owns. Dump it all in there and soak all day. Occasionally I’ll reach an arm out and flush the toilet. Just because I can.”

“Get one of them beauty mud masks,” Nichols said, delicately patting his cheekbones. “Two cucumber slices on your eyes.”