He said he must have had a clear line to Heaven, for sure enough the next morning he moved to the tubs and spent the day keeping the water clean and washing out the serving pans. After looking at the refuse in some thousands of mess kits three times a day, he was unable to eat anything himself. That night he didn’t know what to pray for and before he could make up his mind he went to sleep.
A few days later he was promoted to the garbage detail, the sergeant telling him, “You’ll never make a real soldier anyway, so you might as well get some kind of training and be earnin’ yer thirty bucks a month.” On the garbage wagon he did less but more nauseating work, emptying huge G.I. cans of vari-odored swill, cleaning the cans, and then riding to the disposal plant on the cargo, where the wagon had to be swept and washed with infinite care against possible inspections. He didn’t eat much that day either, nor the day after; and when he was returned to the mess hall, he was glad enough to tend the tubs. He managed to serve out the week, but he swore he lost ten pounds during that time, just from inability to eat.
The sergeant welcomed him back to the company and for two weeks appeared to have forgotten his existence. Then one morning he delegated him a special emissary to the latrines, and the poor kid, just recovering his appetite, lost it in the course of a single day’s work with mop and broom and disinfectant can. Nor could he see anything humorous in the song which the other members of the detail persisted in singing to cheer them at their tasks, for it was a very dirty ditty, an ode to Latrina, the patron saint of that particular place. Leon said he knew the words by heart but had never sung the song because the words wouldn’t pass his lips. The Ode to Latrina must have been a ghastly thing—but I wanted to hear it as soon as I heard it existed. Some such things are funny because they are so foul; there is such a thing as “shocking” humor.
However, Leon thought he had endured about as much agony and misery as was possible without passing out and he was just wondering if there could be anything worse befall him when an opportunity to escape presented itself. The sergeant called for volunteers who could “parley-voo frog,” and Leon couldn’t report to him fast enough. About a dozen others also declared they could speak French. Leon went them all one better by adding, “I can read and write German and Italian, too.”