"
* * * * *
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 quarters the other day, he played at skipping-rope with the
kiddies. In our ill-assorted flock, in this family without kindred,
this home without a hearth at which we gather, there are three
generations side by side, living, waiting, standing still, like
unfinished statues, like posts.
Our races? We are of all races; we come from everywhere. I look at
the two men beside me. Poterloo, the miner from the Calonne pit, is
pink; his eyebrows are the color of straw, his eyes flax-blue. His
great golden head involved a long search in the stores to find the
vast steel-blue tureen that bonnets him. Fouillade, the boatman from
Cette, rolls his wicked eyes in the long, lean face of a musketeer,
with sunken cheeks and his skin the color of a violin. In good
sooth, my two neighbors are as unlike as day and night.
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