Daybreak brought pure misery. Ice coated the windows—the inside of the windows. You could run a finger down a wall and leave a trail through frost. And the stove had been working so hard that built-up soot had clogged the stovepipe, filling the barracks with smoke before we could get it cleaned out.

We spent the morning trying to keep the cold at bay, stuffing rags along door bottoms and putting cardboard over glass. We even took the newspapers from the rec hall and spread them under our mattresses. We got that idea from one of the New Yorkers, Leo Swartz, who said it was a tenement-dweller’s trick. “It’ll keep the cold from coming up under you so much,” he said.

“You think we ought to call Pops?” I asked Compton, who was having his own problems keeping A Barracks livable.

“What can he do?” Compton replied.

It was a fair question, and since we’d be turning over responsibility to the new educational adviser in just a few hours, anyway, I let the idea drop.

Compton about got his shorts in a twist deciding which he wanted to do more—be a one-man delegation to fetch the adviser from the train station or stay in camp to run things.

“One of us has to stay, Trawnley,” he said.

Finally he said, “You go. And get there on time.”

Apple, watching me layer on outside gear, said, “Where does he get off, giving you orders? You ought to tell him you’re as much a junior leader as he is.”

“He’s been in the job longer,” I said, careful to keep my feelings to myself. Time in grade was the reason Compton gave, whenever he pulled rank on me. It was a term he’d picked up at the military school where he’d got his high school diploma. And where he’d been a cadet officer, a fact he threw out whenever we disagreed about the best way to do something.

I didn’t know if time in grade was part of the chain of command Captain Hakes was so big on. There was so much I didn’t know.

Apple said, “Well, I don’t care how long he’s been a junior leader, I can’t see he’s learned much except how to be almighty unpleasant.”

“Him and Hakes both,” Nate said. “If I’d known I’d have to answer to the likes of them, I’d have thought twice about joining up.”

“Almighty unpleasant,” Apple repeated, “and thick as thieves, too.”

It put me in a bind, listening. On the one hand, every word of what they’d said was true. On the other, I doubted I was supposed to allow such talk.

That was one of the bad things about my job. Half the time I was flying by the seat of my pants.