I was
never tired of watching those crowds and getting into the midst of
them, and studying their types. All the types of young English manhood
came down this street, and some of their faces showed the strain and
agony of war, especially toward the end of the Somme battles, after
four months or more of slaughter. I saw boys with a kind of hunted
look in their eyes; and Death was the hunter. They stared into the
shop windows in a dazed way, or strode along with packs on their
backs, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and white,
haggard faces, as expressionless as masks. Tomorrow or the next day,
perhaps, the Hunter would track them down. Other English officers
showed no sign at all of apprehension or lack of nerve-control,
although the psychologist would have detected disorder of soul in the
rather deliberate note of hilarity with which they greeted their
friends, in gusts of laughter, for no apparent cause, at "Charlie's
bar," where they would drink three cocktails apiece on an empty
stomach, and in their tendency to tell tales of horror as things that
were very funny.
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