[2]

But was this action? Was this war? Was this for what William Hicks had come to France? Well, he told himself, it was not. Soldiering with a shovel. A hell of a way to treat a white man. There were plenty of people to dig holes in the ground, but not many of them could qualify as sharpshooters. And Hicks swelled his chest a trifle, noticing the glint of the metal marksmanship badge on his tunic.

Resting beside him on the ground was a display of unopened food tins above which rose the slender necks of bottles. Of the bottles there were four, prisoning the white wine of the northern French vineyards. Excessive in number were the cans, and they looked as if their contents were edible. But Hicks was not sure. He had bought them from the wizened little French clerk who had regarded him with suspicion through the window of the canteen. For this suspicion, this slight hostility, Hicks did not blame the little Frenchman. He had, he realized, made an ass of himself by pointing to[3] ambiguously labelled cans piled on the shelves inside the canteen and saying: “la, combien?” Now he possessed a choice array of cans of whose contents he knew nothing. All that he asked was that he might be able to eat it.

[3]

That morning he had marched into the town with his tired platoon from a small deserted railway station some miles distant. Once assigned to the houses in which they were to be billeted, the men had unstrapped their blankets and fallen asleep. But not Hicks. He had explored the village with an eye to disposing of the mass of soiled and torn franc-notes which he carried in his pocket. In the French canteen he had found the place for which he was looking. And so he had stood before the clerk, demanding to buy as much of the stock as he could carry.

But the clerk had closed the window, leaving Hicks with a handful of French money and the tinned food and four bottles of vin blanc. Hence his disconsolation. The roll of paper felt unnatural, superfluous in his pocket. He was tempted to fling it away. In the morning the platoon would find the canteen and buy the last can, the last bottle.

Restive, he ran his lean fingers through his uncombed hair, wondering vaguely whether it[4] were true that his regiment was soon to depart for the front.

[4]

It must be true, he decided. There had been an untoward attitude on the part of his officers since the moment that the departure of the platoon had been 

 Prev. P 2/136 next