Men sitting by the roadside in the mud, gnawing at unsavoury food; men
squatting by the ditches, examining their sores, washing their bleeding
feet in the muddy water, replacing the muddy rags about their wounds.
A world without colour. No other colour to be seen beneath the sky but
mud. The very buttons on the men's coats painted to make them look like
mud.
Mud and dirt! Dirty faces, dirty hands, dirty clothes, dirty food, dirty
beds; dirty interiors, from which there was never time to wash the mud;
dirty linen hanging up to dry, beneath which dirty children played, while
dirty women scolded. Filth and desolation all around. Shattered
farmsteads half buried in the mud; shattered gardens trampled into mud. A
weary land of foulness, breeding foulness; tangled wire the only harvest
of the fields; mile after mile of gaping holes, filled with muddy water;
stinking carcases of dead horses; birds of prey clinging to broken
fences, flapping their great wings.
A land where man died, and vermin increased and multiplied. Vermin on
your body, vermin in your head, vermin in your food, vermin waiting for
you in your bed; vermin the only thing that throve, the only thing that
looked at you with bright eyes; vermin the only thing to which the joy of
life had still been left.
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