The sparkling, pantomimic face had dropped into
wrinkles. He was patient and old and tired. Perhaps he, too, would have
been glad of some one to cheer him up. He was just one more
territorial--trench-digger and sentry and filler-in. He became for me
the type of all those faithful, plodding soldiers whose first strength
is spent. In him was gathered up all that fatigue and sadness of men for
whom no glamour remains.
They went past me every day, hundreds of them, padding down the Nieuport
road, their feet tired from service and their boots road-worn--crowds of
men beyond numbering, as far as one could see into the dry, volleying
dust and beyond the dust; men coming toward me, a nation of them. They
came at a long, uneven jog, a cluttered walk. Every figure was sprinkled
and encircled by dust--dust on their gray temples, and on their wet,
streaming faces, dust coming up in puffs from their shuffling feet, too
tired to lift clear of the heavy roadbed. There was a hot, pitiless sun,
and every man of them was shrouded in the long, heavy winter coat, as
soggy as a horse blanket, and with thick leather gaiters, loose,
flapping, swathing their legs as if with bandages. On the man's back was
a pack, with the huge swell of the blanket rising up beyond the neck and
generating heat-waves; a loaf of tough black bread fastened upon the
knapsack or tied inside a faded red handkerchief; and a dingy, scarred
tin Billy-can.
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