Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (best books to read for students .txt) đ
- Author: Henri Barbusse
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Yes, we are truly and deeply different from each other. But we are alike all the same. In spite of this diversity of age, of country, of education, of position, of everything possible, in spite of the former gulfs that kept us apart, we are in the main alike. Under the same uncouth outlines we conceal and reveal the same ways and habits, the same simple nature of men who have reverted to the state primeval.
The same language, compounded of dialect and the slang of workshop and barracks, seasoned with the latest inventions, blends us in the sauce of speech with the massed multitudes of men who (for seasons now) have emptied France and crowded together in the North-East.
Here, too, linked by a fate from which there is no escape, swept willy-nilly by the vast adventure into one rank, we have no choice but to go as the weeks and months goâalike. The terrible narrowness of the common life binds us close, adapts us, merges us one in the other. It is a sort of fatal contagion. Nor need you, to see how alike we soldiers are, be afar offâat that distance, say, when we are only specks of the dust-clouds that roll across the plain.
We are waiting. Weary of sitting, we get up, our joints creaking like warping wood or old hinges. Damp rusts men as it rusts rifles; more slowly, but deeper. And we begin again, but not in the same way, to wait. In a state of war, one is always waiting. We have become waiting-machines. For the moment it is food we are waiting for. Then it will be the post. But each in its turn. When we have done with dinner we will think about the letters. After that, we shall set ourselves to wait for something else.
Hunger and thirst are urgent instincts which formidably excite the temper of my companions. As the meal gets later they become grumblesome and angry. Their need of food and drink snarls from their lipsââThatâs eight oâclock. Now, why the hell doesnât it come?â
âJust so, and me thatâs been pining since noon yesterday,â sulks Lamuse, whose eyes are moist with longing, while his cheeks seem to carry great daubs of wine-colored grease-paint.
Discontent grows more acute every minute.
âIâll bet Plumet has poured down his own gullet my wine ration that heâs supposed to have, and others with it, and heâs lying drunk over there somewhere.â
âItâs sure and certainââMarthereau seconds the proposition.
âAh, the rotters, the vermin, these fatigue men!â Tirloir bellows. âAn abominable raceâall of âemâmucky-nosed idlers! They roll over each other all day long at the rear, and theyâll be damned before theyâll be in time. Ah, if I were boss, they should damn quick take our places in the trenches, and theyâd have to work for a change. To begin with, I should say, âEvery man in the section will carry grease and soup in turns.â Those who were willing, of courseââ
âIâm confident,â cries Cocon, âitâs that Pepere thatâs keeping the others back. He does it on purpose, firstly, and then, too, he canât finish plucking himself in the morning, poor lad. He wants ten hours for his flea-hunt, heâs so finicking; and if he canât get âem, monsieur has the pip all day.â
âBe damned to him,â growls Lamuse. âIâd shift him out of bed if only I was there! Iâd wake him up with boot-toe, Iâdââ
âI was reckoning, the other day,â Cocon went on; âit took him seven hours forty-seven minutes to come from thirty-one dug-out. It should take him five good hours, but no longer.â
Cocon is the Man of Figures. He has a deep affection, amounting to rapacity, for accuracy in recorded computation. On any subject at all, he goes burrowing after statistics, gathers them with the industry of an insect, and serves them up on any one who will listen. Just now, while he wields his figures like weapons, the sharp ridges and angles and triangles that make up the paltry face where perch the double discs of his glasses, are contracted with vexation. He climbs to the firing-step (made in the days when this was the first line), and raises his head angrily over the parapet. The light touch of a little shaft of cold sunlight that lingers on the land sets a-glitter both his glasses and the diamond that hangs from his nose.
âAnd that Pepere, too, talk about a drinking-cup with the bottom out! Youâd never believe the weight of stuff he can let drop on a single journey.â
With his pipe in the corner, Papa Blaire fumes in two senses. You can see his heavy mustache trembling. It is like a comb made of bone, whitish and drooping.
âDo you want to know what I think? These dinner men, theyâre the dirtiest dogs of all. Itâs âBlast thisâ and âBlast thatââJohn Blast and Co., I call âem.â
âThey have all the elements of a dunghill about them,â says Eudore, with a sigh of conviction. He is prone on the ground, with his mouth half-open and the air of a martyr. With one fading eye he follows the movements of Pepin, who prowls to and fro like a hyaena.
Their spiteful exasperation with the loiterers mounts higher and higher. Tirloir the Grumbler takes the lead and expands. This is where he comes in. With his little pointed gesticulations he goads and spurs the anger all around him.
âAh, the devils, what? The sort of meat they threw at us yesterday! Talk about whetstones! Beef from an ox, that? Beef from a bicycle, yes rather! I said to the boys, âLook here, you chaps, donât you chew it too quick, or youâll break your front teeth on the nails!ââ
Tirloirâs harangueâhe was manager of a traveling cinema, it seemsâwould have made us laugh at other times, but in the present temper it is only echoed by a circulating growl.
âAnother time, so that you wonât grumble about the toughness, they send you something soft and flabby that passes for meat, something with the look and the taste of a spongeâor a poultice. When you chew that, itâs the same as a cup of water, no more and no less.â
âTout ca,â says Lamuse, âhas no substance; it gets no grip on your guts. You think youâre full, but at the bottom of your tank youâre empty. So, bit by bit, you turn your eyes up, poisoned for want of sustenance.â
âThe next time,â Biquet exclaims in desperation, âI shall ask to see the old man, and I shall say, âMon capitaineâââ
âAnd I,â says Barque, âshall make myself look sick, and I shall say, âMonsieur le majorâââ
âAnd get nix or the kick-outâtheyâre all alikeâall in a band to take it out of the poor private.â
âI tell you, theyâd like to get the very skin off us!â
âAnd the brandy, too! We have a right to get it brought to the trenchesâas long as itâs been decided somewhereâI donât know when or where, but I know itâand in the three days that weâve been here, thereâs three days that the brandyâs been dealt out to us on the end of a fork!â
âAh, malheur!â
*âThereâs the grub!â announces a poilu [note 1] who was on the look-out at the corner.
âTime, too!â
And the storm of revilings ceases as if by magic. Wrath is changed into sudden contentment.
Three breathless fatigue men, their faces streaming with tears of sweat, put down on the ground some large tins, a paraffin can, two canvas buckets, and a file of loaves, skewered on a stick. Leaning against the wall of the trench, they mop their faces with their handkerchiefs or sleeves. And I see Cocon go up to Pepere with a smile, and forgetful of the abuse he had been heaping on the otherâs reputation, he stretches out a cordial hand towards one of the cans in the collection that swells the circumference of Pepere. after the manner of a life-belt.
âWhat is there to eat?â
âItâs there,â is the evasive reply of the second fatigue man, whom experience has taught that a proclamation of the menu always evokes the bitterness of disillusion. So they set themselves to panting abuse of the length and the difficulties of the trip they have just accomplished: âSome crowds about, everywhere! Itâs a tough job to get alongâgot to disguise yourself as a cigarette paper, sometimes.âââAnd there are people who say theyâre shirkers in the kitchens!â As for him, he would a hundred thousand times rather be with the company in the trenches, to mount guard and dig, than earn his keep by such a job, twice a day during the night!
Paradis, having lifted the lids of the jars, surveys the recipients and announces, âKidney beans in oil, bully, pudding, and coffeeâthatâs all.â
âNom de Dieu!â bawls Tulacque. âAnd wine?â He summons the crowd: âCome and look here, all of you! Thatâthatâs the limit! Weâre done out of our wine!â
Athirst and grimacing, they hurry up; and from the profoundest depths of their being wells up the chorus of despair and disappointment, âOh, Hell!â
âThen whatâs that in there?â says the fatigue man, still ruddily sweating, and using his foot to point at a bucket.
âYes,â says Paradis, âmy mistake, there is some.â
The fatigue man shrugs his shoulders, and hurls at Paradis a look of unspeakable scornââNow youâre beginning! Get your gig-lamps on, if your sightâs bad.â He adds, âOne cup eachârather less perhapsâsome chucklehead bumped against me, coming through the Boyau du Bois, and a drop got spilled.â âAh!â he hastens to add, raising his voice, âif I hadnât been loaded up, talk about the boot-toe heâd have got in the rump! But he hopped it on his top gear, the brute!â
In spite of this confident assurance, the fatigue man makes off himself, curses overtaking him as he goes, maledictions charged with offensive reflections on his honesty and temperance, imprecations inspired by this revelation of a ration reduced.
All the same, they throw themselves on the food, and eat it standing, squatting, kneeling, sitting on tins, or on haversacks pulled out of the holes where they sleepâor even prone, their backs on the ground, disturbed by passers-by, cursed at and cursing. Apart from these fleeting insults and jests, they say nothing, the primary and universal interest being but to swallow, with their mouths and the circumference thereof as greasy as a rifle-breech. Contentment is theirs.
At the earliest cessation of their jaw-bonesâ activity, they serve up the most ribald of raillery. They knock each other about, and clamor in riotous rivalry to have their say. One sees even Farfadet smiling, the frail municipal clerk who in the early days kept himself so decent and clean amongst us all that he was taken for a foreigner or a convalescent. One sees the tomato-like mouth of Lamuse dilate and divide, and his delight ooze out in tears. Poterlooâs face, like a pink peony, opens out wider and wider. Papa Blaireâs wrinkles flicker with frivolity as he stands up, pokes his head forward, and gesticulates with the abbreviated body that
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