“Goddam it, though, but Ah want to git overseas.”
“It's swell over there,” said Fuselli, “everything's awful pretty-like. Picturesque, they call it. And the people wears peasant costumes.... I had an uncle who used to tell me about it. He came from near Torino.”
“Where's that?”
“I dunno. He's an Eyetalian.”
“Say, how long does it take to git overseas?”
“Oh, a week or two,” said Andrews.
“As long as that?” But the movie had begun again, unfolding scenes of soldiers in spiked helmets marching into Belgian cities full of little milk carts drawn by dogs and old women in peasant costume. There were hisses and catcalls when a German flag was seen, and as the troops were pictured advancing, bayonetting the civilians in wide Dutch pants, the old women with starched caps, the soldiers packed into the stuffy Y. M. C. A. hut shouted oaths at them. Andrews felt blind hatred stirring like something that had a life of its own in the young men about him. He was lost in it, carried away in it, as in a stampede of wild cattle. The terror of it was like ferocious hands clutching his throat. He glanced at the faces round him. They were all intent and flushed, glinting with sweat in the heat of the room.
As he was leaving the hut, pressed in a tight stream of soldiers moving towards the door, Andrews heard a man say:
“I never raped a woman in my life, but by God, I'm going to. I'd give a lot to rape some of those goddam German women.”
“I hate 'em too,” came another voice, “men, women, children and unborn children. They're either jackasses or full of the lust for power like their rulers are, to let themselves be governed by a bunch of warlords like that.”
“Ah'd lahk te cepture a German officer an' make him shine ma boots an' then shoot him dead,” said Chris to Andrews as they walked down the long row towards their barracks.
“You would?”
“But Ah'd a damn side rather shoot somebody else Ah know,” went on Chris
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