Wooden Crosses | Page 9

the same he cried, "There's one short!" just to show that he was still on the spot.
"Now for the wine," said the quartermaster.
Sulphart dashed forward first of all, and as long as the distribution lasted he never raised his head; while a bucket was filling he groaned and moaned and uttered little cries of anguish, as if it was his heart's blood that was being run off.
"That'll do!... That'll do!" he cried. "It holds more than the proper measure.... Thief!"
But the others, who were accustomed to it all, endured the insults and kept the wine. His turn came at length, and he got his bucket filled up to the very brim, swearing that six new chums had turned up, that the corporal was going to lodge a complaint, that they had already been curtailed the day before, that the Captain....
"Here, and bung off," said the exasperated quartermaster, pouring out a last quarter of a litre for him. "Lord, what a life!"
Highly pleased with himself, Sulphart went back like a conqueror, his bucket in one hand and his bag on his shoulder. They passed through the village, where the idle soldiers were roaming in quest of a pub, and on the way he tried to inculcate into the new chum the first principles of cunning and trickery essential for a soldier on campaign.
"Every man for himself, you know. I'd far rather drink other people's drink than have the others drinking mine.... It always is the modest folk that lose out."
Halting in a spot where nobody was passing, he dipped his drinking-cup in the bucket and offered it to Gilbert.
"Here," he said, "drink that, you've a right to it."
He had, in a word, drawn up in his own mind, and for his own sole personal guidance, a little treatise on the rights and duties of the soldier, in which it was fully and frankly conceded that the man on ration fatigue had a right to a cup of wine as a perquisite. He drank one too, since he was helping the man on duty, and started off again by so much the lighter. As they walked, he told Gilbert stories, talking in the same breath of his wife, who was a dressmaker; of the battle of Guise; the factory where he had worked in Paris, and of Morache, the Adjutant, a re-enlisted man, our special horror. When they reached cantonments he put down the bucket, taking oath that he had never so much as tasted the wine, and offering to prove it by letting anybody smell his breath; then he went to Demachy again, having taken a fancy to him.
"If I'd had the dibs like you," he said, "and had your education, I swear they wouldn't have seen me coming into the fire like this. I'd have put in for the officers' course, and I'd have gone and spent some months in camp, and then they'd have listed me sub-lieutenant in the middle of 1915. And by that the war'll be over.... What I say is, that you didn't know how to swim."
CHAPTER III
THE RED PENNON

FROM break of day the regiment was measuring out the road with its long blue ribbon. There was a thick sound of tramping, voices, and laughter moving forward in the midst of the dust. Untiringly the comrades, elbow to elbow, told one another those hackneyed tales of the regiment, every one like every other one, that you might imagine took place all in the same barracks. They wrangled with one another from rank to rank; head thrown back, they emptied the bidons filled at the halting-place; and as they passed, they challenged the road labourer by the roadside, the peasant in his vineyard, the woman coming back from the field. Now and then they met a gendarme.
"Hi, lad.... that's not the way to the trenches."
Nobody gave a thought to the war. Everything breathed devil-may-caredom and gaiety. It was not too hot, the country was bright, and they looked at things with the amused eyes of soldiers on manoeuvres....
Bouffioux' shining face carried black lines, the mark of his fingers and the rills of sweat running down from his cap. He had placed himself alongside Hamel to talk about Havre. They were chumming up over the names of streets and pubs, and for the hundredth time they were astounded not to have known each other as civilians.
"And yet you have a big fat face that nobody could miss," repeated Hamel every time.
Stoutly built, he marched with wide strides; fat Bouffioux, on the contrary, went with little tripping, hurrying steps, and Fouillard, who was marching next behind him, with his dirty neckerchief knotted around his neck, never stopped grumbling.
"Will you walk straight, you fat beast! If only he'd take my mess-pot!... Why don't you ever carry it, anyway?... You don't