lie about it. With his feet gone quite stiff, the patient didn't
help me a bit. Then at last the legs of it--they'd been pulled about
so--came unstuck at the knees, and his breeks tore away, and all the
lot came, flop! There was me, all of a sudden, with a full boot in each
fist. The legs and feet had to be emptied out."

"You're going it a bit strong!"

"Ask Euterpe the cyclist if it isn't true. I tell you he did it along
of me, too. We shoved our arms inside the boots and pulled out of 'em
some bones and bits of sock and bits of feet. But look if they weren't
worth while!"

So, until Caron returns, Poterloo continues on his behalf the wearing
of the Bavarian machine-gunner's boots.

Thus do they exercise their wits, according to their intelligence,
their vivacity, their resources, and their boldness, in the struggle
with the terrible discomfort. Each one seems to make the revealing
declaration, "This is all that I knew, all I was able, all that I dared
to do in the great misery which has befallen me."

* * * * *

Mesnil Joseph drowses; Blaire yawns; Marthereau smokes, "eyes front."
Lamuse scratches himself like a gorilla, and Eudore like a marmoset.
Volpatte coughs, and says, "I'm kicking the bucket." Mesnil Andre has
got out his mirror and comb and is tending his fine chestnut beard as
though it were a rare plant. The monotonous calm is disturbed here and
there by the outbreaks of ferocious resentment provoked by the presence
of parasites--endemic, chronic, and contagious.

Barque, who is an observant man, sends an itinerant glance around,
takes his pipe from his mouth, spits, winks, and says--"I say, we don't
resemble each other much."

"Why should we?" says Lamuse. "It would be a miracle if we did."

* * * * *

Our ages? We are of all ages. Ours is a regiment in reserve which
successive reinforcements have renewed partly with fighting units and
partly with Territorials. In our half-section there are reservists of
the Territorial Army, new recruits, and demi-poils. Fouillade is forty;
Blaire might be the father of Biquet, who is a gosling of Class 1913.
The corporal calls Marthereau "Grandpa" or "Old Rubbish-heap,"
according as in jest or in earnest. Mesnil Joseph would be at the
barracks if there were no war. It is a comical effect when we are in
charge of Sergeant Vigile, a nice little boy, with a dab on his lip by
way of mustache. When we were in qu