through.

We move again, silent and chagrined. Every step becomes hard to
complete. Our faces assume congealed and fixed grimaces under the
wan leprosy of dust. The unending effort contracts us and quite
fills us with dismal weariness and disgust.

We espy at last the long-sought oasis. Beyond a hill, on a still
higher one, some slated roofs peep from clusters of foliage as
brightly green as a salad. The village is there, and our looks
embrace it, but we are not there yet. For a long time it seems to
recede as fast as the regiment crawls towards it.

At long last, on the stroke of noon, we reach the quarters that had
begun to appear a pretense and a legend. In regular step and with
rifles on shoulders, the regiment floods the street of
Gauchin-l'Abbe right to its edges. Most of the villages of
the Pas du Calais are composed of a single street, but such a
street! It is often several kilometers long. In this one, the street
divides in front of the mairie and forms two others, so that the
hamlet becomes a big Y, brokenly bordered by low-built dwellings.

The cyclists, the officers, the orderlies, break away from the long
moving mass. Then, as they come up, a few of the men at a time are
swallowed up by the barns, the still available houses being reserved
for officers and departments. Our half-company is led at first to
the end of the village, and then--by some misunderstanding among the
quartermasters--back to the other end, the one by which we entered.
This oscillation takes up time, and the squad, dragged thus from
north to south and from south to north, heavily fatigued and