Perry nodded at the lieutenant´s response, and her obvious attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction. Or perhaps she simply had better things to do than engage in self-pity and did worry about the state of the defenses. These were... well, they were in much the same state they had been for several days now. There was only so much earth you could dig and broken rubble to move around before you came to the conclusion that at some point you were just playing with Legos at a scale most children wished they could play at. There had been talk of extending the trenches back, but there were already two lines behind the first one. Anything that got through them would not be stopped by a fourth line, and if the commies had anything like that, they would have used it already.<br/><br/>The Marine noted the way the paratrooper surveyed Perry´s little DIY work on that section of the trench. As the officer did that, Perry dusted her hands off on her knees, washed them off with a little water from her canteen, dried them off on her pants, and put on her combat gloves. It was her equivalent of a martial artist´s meditation routine. It calmed her down and prepared her for combat, but she did it for rather simple and non-intellectual reason: her combat gloves were too precious to get torn apart digging trenches. She still had a spare pair, but you just never knew. And the message from command seemed to imply that having gloves or anything else in good condition was soon going to be a luxury.<br/><br/>Perry received the compliment on her dugout with a tired smile. It was not that long ago that she received compliments for her clothes or her prettiness, back in the US. For some time now, it had all been about marksmanship scores, grenade throwing, night navigation and the more day-to-day stuff like stitching uniforms back together and knowing a couple civvies with useful stuff to send to the frontline in exchange for food or medicine. The blonde caught herself right at the moment when she knew she would slip into homesickness, and rebounded with a quick nod at the latino officer.<br/><br/>"Those reds must be pretty goddamn bored. Might as well give them something to look at. Something unimportant, but that´s what we know. Speaking of which..." Perry hesitated before asking, but... her curiousity was justified, the way she saw it. "What´s the plan now, el-tee? We going to hold position?"<br/><br/>Perry´s question went one way, but her hopes were running in the opposite direction. And the tense, almost needy stare she directed at Cervantes was not that difficult to pick up on.