At least," he corrected himself,
"there was one I met, and he was a grouser. He was devilish bothered
by the drill-manual. 'It isn't worth while to learn the drill
instruction,' he said, 'they're always changing it. F'r instance,
take the department of military police; well, as soon as you've got
the gist of it, it's something else. Ah, when will this war be
over?' he says."
"They do what they're told to do, those chaps," ventured Eudore.
"Surely. It isn't their fault at all. It doesn't alter the fact that
these professional soldiers, pensioned and decorated in the time
when we're only civvies, will have made war in a damned funny way."
"That reminds me of a forester that I saw as well," said Volpatte,
"who played hell about the fatigues they put him to. 'It's
disgusting,' the fellow said to me, 'what they do with us. We're old
non-coms., soldiers that have done four years of service at least.
We're paid on the higher scale, it's true, but what of that? We are
Officials, and yet they humiliate us. At H.Q. they set us to
cleaning, and carrying the dung away. The civilians see the
treatment they inflict on us, and they look down on us. And if you
look like grousing, they'll actually talk about sending you off to
the trenches, like foot-soldiers! What's going to become of our
prestige? When we go back to the parishes as rangers after the
war--if we do come back from it--the people of the villages and
forests will say, "Ah, it was you that was sweeping the streets at
X--!" To get back our prestige, compromised by human injustice and
ingratitude, I know well,' he says, 'that we shall have to make
complaints, and make complaints and make 'em with all our might, to
the rich and to the influential!' he says.
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