Wooden Crosses | Page 7

the
heavy silence that broods over a freezing countryside. But suddenly, on
the roadways, a deep rumbling awoke, increased, thickened, rolled
towards us, and the walls began to shake.... The service lorries.
They rolled on heavily, with a jolting clamour of ironmongery. How I
would have liked to go to sleep with that familiar rolling roar in my
ears and in my soul! Not so long ago the motorbusses passed like that
under my windows and held me awake, late, late into the night. How I
loathed them in those days! And now, without holding any grudge, they
had nevertheless come to see me in my exile. As once upon a time, they
made me start and quiver, half asleep and half awake, and I felt the
walls shiver and tremble. They were coming to cradle me to sleep.
"It's queer, to-night there's no sound of their hard jolting on the
pavement, nor rattling windows, nor belated passers-by calling them to
stop. Their noise is no more than a snoring purr inside my drowsy head.
They grind, they bump, they are gone.... Adieu, Paris!"
CHAPTER II
IN THE SWEAT OF THY BROW

WITH a great pile of packets in front of him like a pedlar's pack, the
harassed quartermaster was calling out the post in the middle of a
regular mob of soldiers, who were all plying their elbows and trampling
on one another's feet. It was just at our door, between the the communal
washhouse--so tiny that there would hardly have been room for three
washerwomen under its sloping shelter roof--and the notary's house,
which wore a red scarf of virginia creeper crosswise on its front. We
had clambered up on the stone seat and were listening attentively.
"Maurice Duclou, first section."
"Killed at Courcy," cried somebody.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, his mates saw him fall in front of the church.... He'd caught a
bullet. Now, . . well, I wasn't there myself."
On the corner of the envelope the quartermaster wrote in pencil,
"Killed."
"Edouard Marquette."
"He must be killed too," said a voice.
"You're a ninny!" protested another. "The night they said he was
dropped he went on a water-party with me."
"Then," asked the quartermaster, "he would be in hospital? But we've
not had his papers.
"My idea is that he was evacuated by another regiment."
"No, no, he was wounded; the Boches must have collared him."
"It's a great pity--it's always the ones that have seen nothing have most
chat."
Everybody was talking at once in an uproar of opposing statements and

insulting contradictions. The quartermaster, hard-pushed and in a hurry,
brought them into agreement.
"I don't give a curse. I'll mark him off 'Missing.' AndrŽ Brunet,
thirteenth squad."
"Here for him."
The others were going on disputing in lowered tones; the men in the
hindmost ranks were shouting to them to be quiet, and nobody could
hear anything. BrŽval listened through it all, anxiously listened, and
when a name sounded like his, had it repeated.
"Isn't it for me, this time? Corporal BrŽval?"
But it was never for him, and turning his poor vexed face to us, he
explained.
"She writes so badly that there might be nothing queer about it, eh?"
As the heap lessened his lips tightened. When the last one was called
out, he went away, heart and hands empty alike. Just as he was going
indoors he turned to us.
"By the way, Demachy, your turn on fatigue. You will take a bag and
go to fetch the rations."
"What? The new chum going for rations!... You're making game of us."
And Sulphart, all indignant, left his particular group of pals to come up
to the corporal.
"A lad that's just come, who fancies that carrots grow at the fruiterer's,
that's the best you can find to send for the rations! Ah, you're up to
tricks.... If every fool could swim you wouldn't need a boat to cross the
Seine."
"If you want to go I'm not hindering you," replied BrŽval calmly.

"Sure, I'll go," shouted Sulphart. "I'll go because I don't want the squad
to get the same food as wooden horses, and because that lad looks to
me as if he could choose a bit of beef about as well as I could say a
Mass."
Demachy, who ever since he arrived had been overwhelmed by the
cries, the noisy demands, and brutal gaities of the redhead, made an
attempt to rehabilitate himself.
"I beg your pardon, I assure you that I shall know what to do very well.
In barracks..."
He was going the wrong way about it. The mere words "active service"
or "barracks" was enough to send Sulphart crazy, inasmuch as he had
spent his three years in stubbornly defending the cause of right against
vindictive Adjutants and