When he was
spotted, they made him go back down to the wine-cellar, and serve
out bottles for everybody. But Corporal Bertrand, who is a man of
scruples, wouldn't have any. Ah, you remember that, do you,
sausage-foot!"
"Where's that cook now that always found wood?" asks Cadilhac.
"He's dead. A bomb fell in his stove. He didn't get it, but he's
dead all the same--died of shock when he saw his macaroni with its
legs in the air. Heart seizure, so the doc' said. His heart was
weak--he was only strong on wood. They gave him a proper
funeral--made him a coffin out of the bedroom floor, and got the
picture nails out of the walls to fasten 'em together, and used
bricks to drive 'em in. While they were carrying him off, I thought
to myself, 'Good thing for him he's dead. If he saw that, he'd never
be able to forgive himself for not having thought of the bedroom
floor for his fire.'--Ah, what the devil are you doing, son of a
pig?"
Volpatte offers philosophy on the rude intrusion of a passing
fatigue party: "The private gets along on the back of his pals. When
you spin your yarns in front of a fatigue gang, or when you take the
best bit or the best place, it's the others that suffer."
"I've often," says Lamuse, "put up dodges so as not to go into the
trenches, and it's come off no end of times. I own up to that. But
when my pals are in danger, I'm not a dodger any more. I forget
discipline and everything else. I see men, and I go.
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