Here, too, linked by a fate from which there is no escape, swept
willy-nilly by the vast adventure into one rank, we have no choice
but to go as the weeks and months go--alike. The terrible narrowness
of the common life binds us close, adapts us, merges us one in the
other. It is a sort of fatal contagion. Nor need you, to see how
alike we soldiers are, be afar off--at that distance, say, when we
are only specks of the dust-clouds that roll across the plain.
We are waiting. Weary of sitting, we get up, our joints creaking
like warping wood or old hinges. Damp rusts men as it rusts rifles;
more slowly, but deeper. And we begin again, but not in the same
way, to wait. In a state of war, one is always waiting. We have
become waiting-machines. For the moment it is food we are waiting
for. Then it will be the post. But each in its turn. When we have
done with dinner we will think about the letters. After that, we
shall set ourselves to wait for something else.
Hunger and thirst are urgent instincts which formidably excite the
temper of my companions. As the meal gets later they become
grumblesome and angry. Their need of food and drink snarls from
their lips--"That's eight o'clock. Now, why the hell doesn't it
come?"
"Just so, and me that's been pining since noon yesterday," sulks
Lamuse, whose eyes are moist with longing, while his cheeks seem to
carry great daubs of wine-colored grease-paint.
Discontent grows more acute every minute.
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