Indeed, I do not think it possible to paint the horror of this journey. Hunger, dirt, and lice--that was the burden of our thoughts. I did not get a bath or an exchange of linen between September 11 and December 9. And even in September I had been laughed at as a mad Englishman for plunging into the cold river. Once I paid a rouble for hot water; but when the soldiers understood that I was going to waste it on a bath they commandeered it for their tea. We could keep our hands and faces fairly clean--if only by washing in the snow by the side of the railway. But our working-men never troubled, and our particular part of the transport was so dirty that the others called us the “Nigger Minstrels.” We could not even get them to sweep the truck out periodically, but they used to let the dirt accumulate from week to week. [SN: VERMIN] And then the lice. I shall never forget the first one I discovered on my collar-band. The horror of that moment never diminished, familiarity only bred deeper disgust. Every day we took off all our clothing and searched it; towards the end it was necessary to do so three or four times a day. We never found less than a hundred lice at a search. Verminousness breaks a man’s spirit more completely than any other affliction; he loathes himself, and from self-loathing quickly falls into despondency and despair. Besides, we all knew that the louse was the carrier of that dread disease, hemorrhagic typhus, of whose ravages we had heard so much. Considering that the whole transport was in the same condition with regard to lice as ourselves, it is a wonder that no disease broke out on the journey. Outwardly we were the merriest crew imaginable. We had our professional clowns, who every night brought out the same hits of last season’s music-halls. We had our professional “raconteur,” a Pole, with a real gift both for story-telling and repartee, and who could make the dullest party lively. We had our soldiers’ songs, reminiscences of the field and of the garrison, eternal discussions about Catholic and Protestant, Socialism and Capitalism, and a thousand other things to keep us going. And there was one unceasing subject of interest that rarely let us think of anything else, namely, when were we going to get our next meal. It is an uncertainty that would add piquancy to almost any situation. [SN: STRETENSK]