"
"In the first expedition to the Dardanelles, there was actually a
chemist wounded by a shell. You don't believe me, but it's true all
the same--an officer with green facings, wounded!"
"That's chance, as I wrote to Mangouste, driver of a remount horse
for the section, that got wounded--but it was done by a motor
lorry."
"That's it, it's like that. After all, a bomb can tumble down on a
pavement, in Paris or in Bordeaux."
"Oui, oui; so it's too easy to say, 'Don't let's make distinctions
in danger!' Wait a bit. Since the beginning, there are some of those
others who've got killed by an unlucky chance; among us there are
some that are still alive by a lucky chance. It isn't the same
thing, that, seeing that when you're dead, it's for a long time."
"Yes," says Tirette, "but you're getting too venomous with your
stories of shirkers. As long as we can't help it, it's time to turn
over. I'm thinking of a retired forest-ranger at Cherey, where we
were last month, who went about the streets of the town spying
everywhere to rout out some civilian of military age, and he smelled
out the dodgers like a mastiff. Behold him pulling up in front of a
sturdy goodwife that had a mustache, and he only sees her mustache,
so he bullyrags her--'Why aren't you at the front, you?'"
"For my part," says Pepin, "I don't fret myself about the
shirkers or the semi-shirkers, it's wasting one's time; but where
they get on my nerves, it's when they swank.
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