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One morning, while sojourning in what Olympus humorously calls a rest-camp, a collection of antiquated wigwams half submerged in a mud-flat, we received the intelligence that we were to extricate ourselves forthwith, and take over a fresh sector of trenches.
The nearer my throlly came to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an' the louder was the voice of Peg Barney. "Tis good I am here, thinks I to mysilf, 'for Peg alone is employmint for two or three. He bein', I well knew, as copped as a dhrover. "Faith, that rest-camp was a sight!
'Whin I was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin' along fit to burrst, I heard the noise av the men an', on my sowl, Sorr, I cud catch the voice av Peg Barney bellowin' like a bison wid the belly-ache. You remimber Peg Barney that was in D Comp'ny a red, hairy scraun, wid a scar on his jaw?
Tracing the path to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up under the low-hanging trees.
Thus went the days by, the weeks and the months; four days in the front line, the harassing journey to and from it, the monotonous sentry-go, the spy-hole on the plain, the mesmerism of the empty outlook and of the deserts of waiting; and after that, four days of rest-camp full of marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations.
In intervals among the occupations of the rest-camp, I wandered spiritless, blotted out by the common soldiers' miserable uniform, familiarly addressed by any one and every one, and stopping no glance from a woman, by reason of the non-coms. I should never be an officer, like the Trompsons' son. It was not so easy in my sector as in his.
I was fortunate enough to run into some old friends, and through one of them met General Sutton, who most kindly and opportunely rescued me from the dreary "Rest-Camp" and took me to his house. While I was waiting for a chance to get a place on a transport, he one morning asked me to go with him to Zobeir, where he was to dedicate a hospital.
The nearer my throlly came to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an' the louder was the voice av Peg Barney. ''Tis good I am here, thinks I to myself, 'for Peg alone is employment for two or three. He bein', I well knew, as copped as a dhrover. "Faith, that rest-camp was a sight!
"Whin I was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin' along fit to burrst, I heard the noise av the men an', on my sowl, sorr, I cud catch the voice av Peg Barney bellowin' like a bison wid the belly-ache. You remimber Peg Barney that was in D Comp'ny a red, hairy scraun, wid a scar on his jaw?
They were going back to the trenches after a spell in a rest-camp, to the same old business of whizz-bangs and pip-squeaks, and dugouts, and the smell of wet clay and chloride of lime, and the life of earth-men who once belonged to a civilization which had passed. And they went whistling on their way, because it was the very best thing to do.
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