le box of straw
standing upright on the roadside, and with just enough room for him
inside, also standing upright. No more. Whenever he heard the whir of
a motor coming down the road, he opened his front door and stood
squarely in the middle of the roadway, waving a red flag by day or a
lantern by night, and expecting, both night and day, to be run down
and killed by the onrushing motor. He flagged the ambulances and got
cursed for it. He flagged the General's car and got cursed for it.
Impossible pieces of paper were shoved out to him to read, filled with
unintelligible hieroglyphics, which he could not read, which he made a
vain pretence of reading and then concluded were all right. After
which the car or the ambulance dashed on again, and he communed with
himself within his hut, wondering whether the car was carrying a
uniformed spy, or whether the ambulance was carrying a spy hidden
under its brown wings, beneath the seat somewhere. It was all so
perplexing and precarious, this business of sentry duty. The papers
issued by the D.E.S. were so illegible. Sometimes they were blue,
sometimes pink, and the remarks written on them were such that no one
could understand or know what they were about. People had the right to
circulate by this road or that--and when they were trying to circulate
by a route not specified in the blue or pink paper, they always
explained glibly that it was because they had missed the way, and made
the wrong turning. It was all so perplexing. Whenever he stopped their
cars, the General was always so furiously impatient, and the
ambulance drivers were always so furiously impatient, and one asked
you if you did not respect the Army of France, and the other if you
did not respect the wounded of France, if you had no pity for them,
and must delay them--altogether it was very perplexing. Maubert always
had the impression that if he failed in his duties, if he let through
a general who wore stripes and medals galore, yet who was a spy
general, that he would be courtmartialed and shot. Or if he let
through an ambulance full of wounded--apparently--yet with a spy
concealed in the body--that he would be courtmartialed and shot.
Always he had in his mind this fear of being courtmartialed and shot,
and it made him very nervous, and he did not like to tell people that
he could barely read and write. Very barely able to read and write,
and totally unable to read the hieroglyphics written on the pink and
blue