I couldn’t blame the guys for turning to pranks, and most were harmless enough. Except Captain Hakes didn’t like the ones he heard of, and when one went bad, he came down hard.

Actually, the fellows really shouldn’t have taken advantage of Snooze—Wendell Perkins—like they did.

Snooze snored the loudest and slept the soundest of anyone in B Barracks, which of course was why he got the nickname he did. Anyway, one night a few guys moved him, bed and all, outside. He never even woke up till sometime later, when he got snowed on. And by then the tops of his ears were frostbit.

Another of my guys, Bo Richards, the infirmary assistant, got into an argument with Captain Hakes over whether to call the camp doctor out from town.

“I’m not wasting camp money on unnecessary medical calls,” the captain said.

“He could lose the tops of his ears,” Bo told him. “That might turn into a hospital stay that would cost more.”

Hakes brought out the doctor, but he also took away weekend passes from everyone in B Barracks, whether we’d taken part in the prank or not.

And he gave me a dressing-down like I’d not got before. “I warned you, Trawnley. Your job is to keep the men in your barracks in line. Now that’s strike one!”

Then he went on to say some more, too, mainly about how I ought to take a page from Compton’s book. I didn’t doubt that if Hakes could have traded me in for another Compton, he would have.

He wound up by reminding me I was being paid to represent the men in my barracks, which I hadn’t done by sending Richards directly to him. “There’s a chain of command for a reason. I expect you to respect it, and to see that the men in B Barracks do.”

Then the last Friday in January, the military staff set off for a meeting at district headquarters, leaving Compton and me in charge of the camp.

“It’s just two nights,” Captain Hakes said, giving us our instructions. “The new education adviser will be arriving by train tomorrow afternoon and will give you a hand. And if you run into problems meanwhile, you can call Pops Jensen or one of the other LEMs to come out from town.”

“We’ll be fine, sir,” Compton said.

About suppertime the temperature started to drop.

It continued plunging through the night, and I wasn’t the only one who got up time and again to put on more clothes, till finally I was sleeping in my long johns, a sweater, and wool socks. I had my coat spread out on top of my blankets.