You never can tell in this war. Sometimes
you'll trot out to the front, all keyed up, and then sit around among
the "Set-Sanks" for a month playing pinochle, and watching the flies
chase each other across the marmalade. And then a sultry dull day will
suddenly show you things....
Out from the Grand Place of Alost radiate narrow little streets that run
down to the canal, like spokes of a wheel. Each little street had its
earthworks and group of defenders. Out over the canal stretched
footbridges, and these were thickly sown with barbed wire.
"Great luck," said Rossiter. "They're making an old-time barricade. It's
as good as the days of the Commune. Do you remember your street-fighting
in Les Miserables?"
"I surely do," I replied. "Breast high earthworks, and the 'citizens'
crouched behind under the rattle of bullets."
"This is going to be good," he went on in high enthusiasm. The soldiers
were rolling heavy barrels to the gutter, and knocking off the heads.
The barrels were packed with fish, about six inches long, with scales
that went blue and white in the fresh morning light. The fish slithered
over the cobbles, and the soldiers stumbled on their slippery bodies.
They set the barrels on end, side by side, and heaped the cracks between
and the face with sods of earth, thick-packed clods, with grass growing.
The grass was bright green, unwilted.
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