This sally raised a general laugh. Through the open windows our gaze roved over the countryside. It was a little depressing no doubt. This war! How many would set eyes on this landscape again next year!... But let's hope for the best whatever happens. After all, it simply meant that manoeuvres would last rather longer than usual!... This state of affairs would not last for ever; two or three months, six at the most! and it would be all over!... and Philoppon, the fair-haired dandy who had been brought to the station in a car by his people, already had visions of next winter, which he expected to spend as usual on the Riviera. "I tell you what, you chaps, I shall see an extraordinary improvement in it after the war, what!" * * * * * On our arrival we went straight to the barracks. The weather was stormy. In crossing F---- I was reminded of our former route marches.... Our platoon heading the battalion. The company commander gave us as guide a great lout of a sergeant who kept up a stream of invectives. All the world and his wife were at the windows. Left--Right! Left--Right! Our pace quickened going up the hill, and we had to hang on to each other in order to keep our intervals. What an effort it was, weighed down, and with the muscles of the thigh contracted, and those of the calf aching, to cover the last lap. I called these things to mind now all the more easily because I again found myself struggling with my pack on the same ascent. I was perspiring, and already tired and depressed. And then in those days I had the buoyancy and the enthusiasm of youth, and facing these trials I used to say to myself, "It's got to be gone through!" I had the feeling that I was buying repose for the rest of my life. What a sigh I had heaved when my time was up. I had thought my period of physical constraint, the most trying of all, over and done with!... And now I had got to go through it all over again.... Worse even than that. The hardest part by far still awaited me!... How I loathed in advance the bitter hardships to come, the defilades at the double, the tramps across the ploughed fields under the crushing weight of the pack, all the cursed, humiliating, bodily subjection. But I made a childish vow not to "overdo" things, as they say. CHAPTER XII NEW COMRADES AND OLD Having registered my name the sergeant on duty snapped: "The 22nd! They're in the College, Rue St. Paul." One thing delighted me. Guillaumin was attached to the same unit. I had so often experienced his good-nature and devotion. He would be invaluable, perfect, on active service. But what other non-coms., should we have as companions?