"Oh, is that so?" Hawkeye says with mock-offence "Well challenge accepted, Captain Barnes, because the very worst that English cuisine has to offer cannot hope to compare to the true horror of our mess tent. Wounded men recover quicker just to get away from it. Why, I had a kid here last week who lost his leg to a minefield, he grew it back just so he could run away from breakfast."

The first part's true, at least. In fact the kid had been shipped home, and he was the lucky one - he hadn't gone home in a box. He can't dwell on that, though, he can never dwell on that.

"We fed some to a North Korean two weeks ago and they stopped shelling us for three days because they felt sorry for us." he adds, keeping the flow going mostly to see if he can make her laugh.