SLPAD - 44 - “you’re with Picnic”

[Michael Bailey]

Unfazed by Levine’s tardiness, the lieutenant assigns him a partner:
“you’re with Picnic.”

Folds the map “carelessly”, pockets it, & with a few words - “Okay, that’s
all till one then. Have the trucks out of the motor pool by then and take
off. I’ll see you at Lake Charles,” - he’s off, letting the screen door
slam behind him.

Time for a smoke & a Coke, per Rizzo.

Baxter, “a little blond-haired farm kid from Pennsylvania”, invokes Christ
& starts complaining about whatever this mission is. Something involving
helping Cajuns who he thinks ordinarily treat soldiers like dirt.

“Dogs and Army Stay off the Grass and all. But the minute the least little
thing screws up, who do they go crying to.”

     “131st Signal Battalion,” Rizzo said, “is who.”

Levine, using, I think, a phrase & an elision of question-mark-tone from
his transplanted accent, asks, “Where-all we going at one.”

His partner-designee, Picnic, does a walk-and-talk:

“…got up from where he was sitting
               and headed for the Coke machine. ‘Someplace out by Lake
Charles,’ he said.”