ent-cloth
skin," Barque confesses, though he does not know himself what "cold
feet" are. "It worries them to rest, you know; they only live for the
minute when the officer puts his watch back in his pocket and says,
'Off you go!'"

"In fact, they're real soldiers."

"We are not soldiers," says big Lamuse, "we're men." Though the evening
has grown darker now, that plain true saying sheds something like a
glimmering light on the men who are waiting here, waiting since the
morning, waiting since months ago.

They are men, good fellows of all kinds, rudely torn away from the joy
of life. Like any other men whom you take in the mass, they are
ignorant and of narrow outlook, full of a sound common sense--which
some-times gets off the rails--disposed to be led and to do as they are
bid, enduring under hardships, long-suffering.

They are simple men further simplified, in whom the merely primitive
instincts have been accentuated by the force of circumstances--the
instinct of self-preservation, the hard-gripped hope of living through,
the joy of food, of drink, and of sleep. And at intervals they are
cries and dark shudders of humanity that issue from the silence and the
shadows of their great human hearts.

When we can no longer see clearly, we hear down there the murmur of a
command, which comes nearer and rings loud--"Second half-section!
Muster!" We fall in; it is the call.

"Gee up!" says the corporal. We are set in motion. In front of the
tool-depot there is a halt and trampling. To each is given a spade or
pickax. An N.C.O. presents the handles in the gloom: "You, a spade;
there, hop it! You a spade, too; you a pick. Allons, hurry up and get
off."

We leave by the communication trench at right angles to our own, and
straight ahead towards the changeful frontier, now alive and terrible.

Up in the somber sky, the strong staccato panting of an invisible
aeroplane circles in wide descending coils and fills infinity. In
front, to right and left, everywhere, thunderclaps roll with great
glimpses of short-lived light in the dark-blue sky.

------------

[note 1:] The popular and international name for a French soldier. Its
literal meaning is "hairy, shaggy," but the word has conveyed for over
a century the idea of the virility of a Samson, whose strength lay in
his locks.--Tr.

[note 2:] 6250 miles.

[note 3:] Pourvu que les civils tiennent. In the early days of the war
it was a common French saying that victor