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in the water. During the night we'd cadge a few minutes here and there that came pretty close to the blessed days of peace, those days that now seem too good to be true, when everything was benign, when nothing really mattered, when we did so many things that had come to seem so marvelously, superlatively delightful. Days of peace, days of living velvet ... But soon the nights as well were a merciless torment. Almost every night we'd have to keep our weary bones at work, put up with a little extra torture, just so as to eat or catch a little nap in the darkness. The food convoys moved up to the front lines at a disgraceful crawl, long limping lines of shaky wagons, bursting with meat, prisoners, wounded, oats, rice, and M.P.'s, and don't forget the wine in big jiggling pot-bellied jugs that reminded us of high old times.
    Behind the rolling forge and the bread wagon men came dragging themselves on foot, prisoners in handcuffs, some of theirs and some of ours, condemned to this or that, lashed by the wrists to the M.P.s' stirrups, some due to be shot the next day and no downer in the mouth than the others. It didn't spoil their appetites either, they ate their ration of that tuna fish that's so indigestible (they wouldn't have time to digest it) while waiting by the side of the road for the convoy to shove off?and they ate their last chunk of bread, too, with a civilian chained to them, who was said to be a spy but he didn't know it. Neither did we. The military torture continued in its nocturnal aspect ... Groping our way through the hump-backed streets of a village without light or face, bent under sacks that weighed more than a man, from one unknown barn to another, threatened and yelled at, haggard, with no better prospect than to end in a sea of liquid manure, sickened at the thought that we'd been tortured, duped to the entrails by a gang of vicious lunatics, who had suddenly become incapable of doing anything else than killing and spilling their guts without knowing why. We'd flop down between two manure piles, but the noncoms would soon kick and bellow us to our feet, and send us to a different part of the convoy, to load or unload something else.
    The village darkness was gorged with food and soldiers, bloated with fat, apples, oats, sugar, that we had to haul around and distribute to this squad and that squad. That convoy had brought everything except a ticket home.
    Our detail was dead tired, we'd drop right next to our cart, and the sergeant-major would come around and shine his lantern on the corpses. He was an ape with a double chin. Regardless of the chaos, he had to find a watering place for the horses! Oh yes, the horses had to drink! But I've seen four men, ass and all, drop with fatigue, and fall fast asleep with the water up to their necks.
    After the watering we had to find the alley we'd come by and get back to the farm, where we thought we'd left the rest of our squad. If we didn't find it, we could always pass out at the foot of some wall and sleep for an hour, if there was an hour left. In this business of getting killed, it's no use being picky and choosy ... You've got to act as if life were going on, and that lie is the hardest part of it.
    The wagons started back to the rear. In flight from the dawn, they hit the road again. Squeaking in every crooked wheel, off they drove, and with them went my prayer that they'd be ambushed, cut to pieces, burned that same day, the way you see in war pictures, supply column wiped out for ever and ever, with its escort of M.P. gorillas, horse soldiers, and lantern-swinging noncoms, with its work details, its sacks of lentils and flour that would never be cooked and never be seen, again. Because there are many different ways of kicking in, of exhaustion or something else, but the worst is to do it while hauling enough sacks to fill the night with.
    The day when those motherfucking wagons would be shattered to the axles, they'd leave us alone, I thought, and even if