What's
human life? What's the value of one man's throat? We're trained up as
murderers--I don't dislike it, mind you--and after the war we sha'n't
get out of the habit of it. It'll come nat'ral like!"
He was talking for my benefit, egged on to further audacities by a
group of comrades who roared with laughter and said: "Go it, Bill!
That's the stuff!" Among these Lilliputians were fellows who sat aloof
and sullen, or spoke of their adventure with its recent horror in
their eyes. Some of them had big heads on small bodies, as though they
suffered from water on the brain . . . Many of them were sent home
afterward. General Haldane, as commander of the 6th Corps, paraded
them, and poked his stick at the more wizened ones, the obviously
unfit, the degenerates, and said at each prod, "You can go . . . You.
. .You. . . ." The Bantam Division ceased to exist.
They afforded many jokes to the army. One anecdote went the round. A
Bantam died--of disease ("and he would," said General Haldane)--and a
comrade came to see his corpse.
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