"I TOLD YOU," one woman said

  loudly.  This prompted another woman to grab the throat of a guy's tee-shirt and furiously growl-say, How long was I asleep for?!? While two people were pulling her behind some junk in a yard and carefully, but frantically, re-wrapping "the wound that never happened."  Even though, it had.  A clip fell on the ground which the louder woman stepped on without knowing.  "To call me if and when you needed me, not cut a body part off," her totally sunburned face said as it popped up over the junk and dialed down on us. 

  "I neither cut off a body part, nor put one back on.  Don't know what kind of reports you're getting these days." 

  "Well, they don't Airmail something like that Missy, but I FIND OUT." 

  Administrative people in all the Services had spent some "overlap" time with Commanders' support teams.  And had also diligently guard rail'd every conversation between Allies while "the whole" Force pivoted and pinwheeled.  That way "Internationals" could keep abreast of select topics with eachother. 

  "Did you get to be an International?" 

  Ooooowah, "I did." She tweezed.  "What's up with this box of curling irons?" People looked at each other.  A stronger-that-day picked up a tangle of cords.  "That's where that went.  Well, this one's a straightening curler." 

  "How can it be a straightening anything AND be a curler?  She meant rod." One person had gone to a store.  Deftly put a pack of cigarettes and gum on the vanity table.  "Anyone else want anything?"  A car went by outside.  People patted pockets and felt for essential items on their persons.  "All good here." 

  "I'd take a pack of gum if," person cruised past to see the smell, "There's not that." 

  "The nicotine part or the flavoring?" 

  "Personally, I don't tend to buy fruity.  I eat it too fast." 

  "You're not supposed to eat gum brown noser.  And anyway, who asked you for your opinion or whatever that piece of speech just was?!" A person snapped a bubblegum bubble really harsh and asked.  Then pulled a wad into a long string and nibbled it back into her mouth.  "It's gonna be a long night," someone said. 

  Excerpt, War of Attrition (Philpott) 

     "Five weeks after enlisting in the Foreign Legion, Alan Seeger wrote to his mother from barrack at Toulouse, on the eve of his departure for the front: 'we are entirely equipped down to our three days' ration and 120 rounds of cartridges.  The wagons are all laden and the horses requisitioned.  The suspense is exciting, for no one has any idea where we shall be sent.'  After six weeks of hard drilling -- twelve hours a day, seven days a week -- he claimed to 'have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit in times of peace takes all his two years at', and all for the modest sum of one sou a day.  Seeger could drill, march and shoot, but he was not yet ready to fight: he would go through a few weeks of tactical training on the old Marne battlefield, within the sound of guns, before going into the trenches in Champagne in late October....

     "Like many thousands of others in 1914 and afterwards, his transition from civilian to soldier would be rapid and intense, as the battles raging across France demanded fighting men at an unprecedented rate" (113, WoA).