"All the same it is pretty. Like gold, eh? I think of the woman,
sometimes. With blue eyes, like a German girl I kissed in Paris-a
dancing-girl!"
There was a howl of laughter from the two women.
"The old one is drunk. He is amorous with the German cow!"
"I will keep it as a mascot," said the poilu, scrunching it up and
thrusting it into his pouch. "It'll keep me in mind of that saligaud
of a German officer I killed. He was a chic fellow, tout de meme. A
boy."
VI
Australians slouched up the Street of the Three Pebbles with a grim
look under their wide-brimmed hats, having come down from Pozieres,
where it was always hell in the days of the Somme fighting. I liked
the look of them, dusty up to the eyes in summer, muddy up to their
eyes in winter--these gipsy fellows, scornful of discipline for
discipline's sake, but desperate fighters, as simple as children in
their ways of thought and speech (except for frightful oaths), and
looking at life, this life of war and this life in Amiens, with frank,
curious eyes, and a kind of humorous contempt for death, and disease,
and English Tommies, and French girls, and "the whole damned show," as
they called it.
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