it glimmered with bland wickedness under the light of the congregational parish hall : a knife that had traveled to france in 1917 with a boy , a boy who had been part of a boy-army ready and willing to stop the dirty hun from bayoneting babies and raping nuns , ready to show the frenchies a thing or two in the bargain ; and the boys had been machine-gunned , the boys had gotten dysentery and the killer flu , the boys had inhaled mustard gas and phosgene gas , the boys had come out of belleau wood looking like haunted scarecrows who had seen the face of lord satan himself .