Chrisfield lay in the field beside the road, pressing his hot face into the wet sprouting clover. The blood throbbed through his ears. His arms and legs seemed to cleave to the ground, as if he would never be able to move them again. He closed his eyes. Gradually a cold chill began stealing through his body. He sat up and slipped his arms out of the harness of his pack. Someone was handing him a cigarette, and he sniffed a little acrid sweet smoke. Andrews was lying beside him, his head propped against his pack, smoking, and poking a cigarette towards his friend with a muddy hand. His blue eyes looked strangely from out the flaming red of his mud-splotched face. Chrisfield took the cigarette, and fumbled in his pocket for a match. “That nearly did it for me,” said Andrews. Chrisfield grunted. He pulled greedily on the cigarette. A whistle blew. Slowly the men dragged themselves off the ground and fell into line, drooping under the weight of their equipment. The companies marched off separately. Chrisfield overheard the lieutenant saying to a sergeant: “Damn fool business that. Why the hell couldn't they have sent us here in the first place?” “So we ain't goin' to the front after all?” said the sergeant. “Front, hell!” said the lieutenant. The lieutenant was a small man who looked like a jockey with a coarse red face which, now that he was angry, was almost purple. “I guess they're going to quarter us here,” said somebody. Immediately everybody began saying: “We're going to be quartered here.” They stood waiting in formation a long while, the packs cutting into their backs and shoulders. At last the sergeant shouted out: “All right, take yer stuff upstairs.” Stumbling on each others' heels they climbed up into a dark loft, where the air was heavy with the smell of hay and with an acridity of cow manure from the stables below. There was a little straw in the corners, on which those who got there first spread their blankets. Chrisfield and Andrews tucked themselves in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into the barns by every door. An officer went up to her, a little red book in his hand. A conversation about some matter proceeded painfully. The officer grew very red. Andrews threw back his head and laughed, luxuriously rolling from side to side in the straw. Chrisfield laughed too, he hardly knew why. Over their heads they could hear the feet of pigeons on the roof, and a constant drowsy rou-cou-cou-cou. Through the barnyard smells began to drift... the greasiness of food cooking in the field kitchen. “Ah hope they give us somethin' good to eat,” said Chrisfield. “Ah'm hongry as a thrasher.” “So am I,” said Andrews.