The lieutenant colonel first looked at Winters, shaking his head. Then he looked at Bard and Andre, as if deciding between the two cavalry officers.
Andre immediately avoided eye contact, and seeing this, Bard sighed and said, "I'll do it."
"Good, then it's you," the lieutenant colonel nodded.
The orderly pulled back the tent flap and brought dish after dish in front of the officers.
Winters had been so hungry he was numb, but the smell of food made his stomach churn again.
The four soldiers didn't have any sort of ritual for saying grace before eating: as soon as the food was on the table, they could begin.
But Winters barely tasted a spoonful of the mushy substance on his plate when he almost threw up the soup he had ingested the day before.
It was disgusting: sour and stinky, as if washing rags had been soaked in it.
If something looked like swill, smelled like swill, and tasted even more like swill, then it must be swill, right?