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[the Sergeant affixes a cloth red '1' to his uniform. The Captain is drinking from a bottle of booze]
The Sergeant: What do you think?
The Captain: What the hell is it?
The Sergeant: It's a "one". First Infantry Division. The Red One; think General Pershing will like it?
The Captain: Oh, sure.
The Sergeant: I got the idea from the cap of a Hun I killed.
The Captain: When?
The Sergeant: About an hour ago
The Captain: Did he yell out anything?
The Sergeant: Oh, the same old Kaiser stuff, you know, "the war's over," all that junk.
[the Captain hands him the bottle]
The Captain: Finish it.
The Sergeant: Sir?
The Captain: Finish it. The Armistice was signed, at eleven o'clock this morning. The war's been over for four hours. You didn't know it was over.
The Sergeant: ...*He* did.
Zab: [narrating] A quarter of a century later that piece of cloth from a dead Hun's hat had become famous all over the world. It was the insignia of the First Infantry Division. The Fightin' First. The Big Red One.
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Zab: [narrating] You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point.
Bobby Di Cicco
Extended Reading
