ler and wider, monumental and crushing. And my
neighbor says truly that every time he reaches his goal after some
miles of highway and communication trenches, the poilu swears hard that
the next time he'll leave a heap of things behind and give his
shoulders a little relief from the yoke of the knapsack. But every time
he is preparing for departure, he assumes again the same overbearing
and almost superhuman load; he never lets it go, though he curses it
always.

"There are some bad boys," says Lamuse, "among the shirkers, that find
a way of keeping something in the company wagon or the medical van. I
know one that's got two shirts and a pair of drawers in an adjutant's
canteen [note 2]--but, you see, there's two hundred and fifty chaps in
the company, and they're all up to the dodge and not many of 'em can
profit by it; it's chiefly the non-coms.; the more stripes they've got,
the easier it is to plant their luggage, not forgetting that the
commandant visits the wagons sometimes without warning and fires your
things into the middle of the road if he finds 'em in a horse-box where
they've no business--Be off with you!--not to mention the bully-ragging
and the clink."

"In the early days it was all right, my boy. There were some
chaps--I've seen 'em--who stuck their bags and even their knapsacks in
baby-carts and pushed 'em along the road."

"Ah, not half! Those were the good times of the war. But all that's
changed."

Volpatte, deaf to all the talk, muffled in his blanket as if in a shawl
which makes him look like an old witch, revolves round an object that
lies on the ground. "I'm wondering," lie says, addressing no one,
"whether to take away this damned tin stove. It's the only one in the
squad and I've always carried it. Oui, but it leaks like a cullender."
He cannot decide, and makes a really pathetic picture of separation.

Barque watches him obliquely, and makes fun of him. We hear him say,
"Senile dodderer!" But he pauses in his chaffing to say, "After all, if
we were in his shoes we should be equally fatheaded."

Volpatte postpones his decision till later. "I'll see about it in the
morning, when I'm loading the camel's back."

After the inspection and recharging of pockets, it is the turn of the
bags, and then of the cartridge-pouches, and Barque holds forth on the
way to make the regulation two hundred cartridges go into the three
pouches. In the lump it is impossible. They must be unpacked and placed