"
His feet were dragging, and his square shoulders bowed under the
burden of the knapsack, whose height and big irregular outline
seemed almost fantastic. Twice he tripped and stumbled.
Paradis is tough. But he had been running up and down the trench all
night as liaison man while the others were sleeping, so he had good
reason to be exhausted and to growl "Quoi? These kilometers must be
made of india-rubber, there's no way out of it."
Every three steps he hoisted his knapsack roughly up with a hitch of
his hips, and panted under its dragging; and all the heap that he
made with his bundles tossed and creaked like an overloaded wagon.
"We're there," said a non-com.
Non-coms. always say that, on every occasion. But--in spite of the
non-com.'s declaration--we were really arriving in a twilight
village which seemed to be drawn in white chalk and heavy strokes of
black upon the blue paper of the sky, where the sable silhouette of
the church--a pointed tower flanked by two turrets more slender and
more sharp--was that of a tall cypress.
But the soldier, even when he enters the village where he is to be
quartered, has not reached the end of his troubles. It rarely
happens that either the squad or the section actually lodges in the
place assigned to them, and this by reason of misunderstandings and
cross purposes which tangle and disentangle themselves on the spot;
and it is only after several quarter-hours of tribulation that each
man is led to his actual shelter of the moment.
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