umbles over
empty jam-pots and dirty rags, where two long lumps lay asleep, while
in the corner a kneeling shape rummaged a pouch by candle-light. As I
climbed out, the rectangle of entry afforded me a revelation of our
legs. Flat on the ground, vertically in the air, or aslant; spread
about, doubled up, or mixed together; blocking the fairway and cursed
by passers-by, they present a collection of many colors and many
shapes--gaiters, leggings black or yellow, long or short, in leather,
in tawny cloth, in any sort of waterproof stuff; puttees in dark blue,
light blue, black, sage green, khaki, and beige. Alone of all his kind,
Volpatte has retained the modest gaiters of mobilization. Mesnil Andre
has displayed for a fortnight a pair of thick woolen stockings, ribbed
and green; and Tirette has always been known by his gray cloth puttees
with white stripes, commandeered from a pair of civilian trousers that
was hanging goodness knows where at the beginning of the war. As for
Marthereau's puttees, they are not both of the same hue, for he failed
to find two fag-ends of greatcoat equally worn and equally dirty, to be
cut up into strips.

There are legs wrapped up in rags, too, and even in newspapers, which
are kept in place with spirals of thread or--much more
practical--telephone wire. Pepin fascinated his friends and the
passers-by with a pair of fawn gaiters, borrowed from a corpse. Barque,
who poses as a resourceful man, full of ideas--and Heaven knows what a
bore it makes of him at times!--has white calves, for he wrapped
surgical bandages round his leg-cloths to preserve them, a snowy
souvenir at his latter end of the cotton cap at the other, which
protrudes below his helmet and is left behind in its turn by a saucy
red tassel. Poterloo has been walking about for a month in the boots of
a German soldier, nearly new, and with horseshoes on the heels. Caron
entrusted them to Poterloo when he was sent back on account of his arm.
Caron had taken them himself from a Bavarian machine-gunner, knocked
out near the Pylones road. I can hear Caron telling about it yet--

"Old man, he was there, his buttocks in a hole, doubled up, gaping at
the sky with his legs in the air, and his pumps offered themselves to
me with an air that meant they were worth my while. 'A tight fit,' says
I. But you talk about a job to bring those beetle-crushers of his away!
I worked on top of him, tugging, twisting and shaking, for half an hour
and no