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Updated: May 9, 2025
"I'm going to Paris tomorrow, Chris," said Andrews. "Ah know it, boy. Ah know it. That's why I was that right smart to talk to you.... You doan want to go to Paris.... Why doan ye come up to Germany with us? Tell me they live like kings up there." "All right," said Andrews, "let's go to the back room at Babette's." Chrisfield hung on his shoulder, walking unsteadily beside him.
The silver trunks of the beeches circled about him, waving jagged arms. It was a German lying full length among the leaves. Chrisfield was furiously happy in the angry pumping of blood through his veins. He could see the buttons on the back of the long coat of the German, and the red band on his cap. He kicked the German. He could feel the ribs against his toes through the leather of his boot.
The sweat was chilled on his face and streaks of cold went through his clothes, soaked from the effort of carrying the pack. In the village street Andrews met a man he did not know and asked him where the office was. The man, who was chewing something, pointed silently to a house with green shutters on the opposite side of the street. At a desk sat Chrisfield smoking a cigarette.
"Look here, you do it or it'll be the worse for you," shouted the sergeant in his deep rasping voice. "If ever Ah gits out o' the army Ah'm goin' to shoot you. You've picked on me enough." Chrisfield spoke slowly, as coolly as Anderson. "Well, we'll see what a court-martial has to say to that." "Ah doan give a hoot in hell what ye do."
The sun set, and a lot of batteries down in the valley began firing, making it impossible to talk. The air was full of a shrieking and droning of shells overhead. The Frenchmen stretched and yawned and went down into their dugout. Chrisfield watched them enviously. The stars were beginning to come out in the green sky behind the tall lacerated trees. Chrisfield's legs ached with cold.
"To hell with women, Chris, this is the war!" cried Andrews in a loud drunken voice as they reeled arm in arm up the street. "You bet it's the war.... Ah'm a-goin' to beat up...." Chrisfield felt his friend's hand clapped over his mouth. He let himself go limply, feeling himself pushed to the side of the road. Somewhere in the dark he heard an officer's voice say: "Bring those men to me."
A dirty grey muslin dress with half the hooks off held in badly her large breasts and flabby figure. Chrisfield looked at her greedily, feeling his furious irritation flame into one desire. "What's the matter with you, Chris? You're crazy to break out of quarters this way?" "Say, Andy, git out o' here. Ah ain't your sort anyway.... Git out o' here." "You're a wild man.
It seemed to Chrisfield that they were going to step any minute into the flaring muzzle of a gun. At the foot of the hill, beside a little grove of uninjured trees, they stopped again. A new train of trucks was crawling past them, huge blots in the darkness.
Chrisfield stood, feeling warm and important, filling his mouth with soft greasy potatoes and gravy, while men about him asked him questions. Gradually he began to feel full and content, and a desire to sleep came over him. But he was given a gun, and had to start advancing again with the reconnoitering squad. The squad went cautiously up the same lane through the woods.
Chrisfield and Andrews tucked themselves in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into the barns by every door.
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