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If a French reservist could be found who was sailing in the first ship bound for the slaughter, he became the hero of the hour and was lifted shoulder high at the head of the procession. War was a brave game at which to play. This was to be a short war and a merry one. Down with the Germans! Up with France! Hurrah for the entente cordiale!
One of the old reservists was telling me of talk of an army of women marching to the front to learn the truth of the situation." "If you don't stop leaning on me I'll give you a punch you'll remember!" exclaimed Pilzer as he rammed his elbow into the old reservist's ribs. "I beg pardon! It was because I am tired and sort of blank-minded," the old reservist explained.
At five we outspanned, with orders to trek again at the uncomfortable hour of 1 A.M. The Orderly-corporal left me and a Sergeant Smith of the Munsters to sleep on the floor of the waggon, and the rest slept in a tent. They gave us tea, and later beef-tea. The sergeant and I sat up till late, yarning. He is a married reservist with two children, and is more than sick of the war.
The few days that elapsed between rejoining and embarkation were spent by the Reservist at the depôt barracks of his regiment, where he received his kit and underwent the small amount of drill necessary to remove the rust of civilian life.
I am given to understand that you were served with a paper, same as the rest, and the Customs Officer was put out by your not going. I don't wonder at it. Such want of pluck. Its no good your saying you are not Abel. If you are Abel to be a Reservist and draw pay, you are Abel to Fight thats how I look at it.
He was a reservist, and in times of peace a fashionable physician and as much at his ease in a boudoir as in a field hospital. "Perhaps if I saw Madam Benet?" At the suggestion the countess was overjoyed. But they found Madame Benet in a state of complete collapse. The conduct of the Germans had brought about a nervous breakdown.
It was as though these swaggering men could no longer endure the last hardly perceptible signs of the discipline to which they had so long obediently submitted; as though this evening would end in open mutiny. Wolf took no part in these noisy demonstrations; he was perhaps the only reservist in the whole regiment who held aloof. He could not stand the noise and the drunkenness.
So with despair in their hearts, leaving behind a good rational life, leaving their wives and their children, they go. Yesterday I met a Reservist soldier accompanied by his mother and wife. All three were riding in a cart; he had had a drop too much; his wife's face was swollen with tears. He turned to me: "Good-by to thee! Lyof Nikolaevitch, off to the Far East."
Now and then children waved to us from a cottage window, and in the fields old men and women and girls leaned silently on their hoes or their rakes and watched us pass. Occasionally an old reservist, guarding the railway line, would lift his cap and shout, "Vive l'Angleterre!" But more often he would lean on his rifle and smile, nodding his head courteously but silently to our salutations.
There were a large number of stragglers, but the majority of them were not men who had fallen out, but men who had become separated from their battalions at Le Cateau. A good many were badly footsore. These were being crowded into lorries and cars. There was one solitary desolate figure. He was evidently a reservist, a feeble little man of about forty, with three days' growth on his chin.
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