The Man Who Sat Next To Me Happened
To Stoop To Fill His Cartridge-Box Just As The Bullet That
Wanted the
space he had occupied passed over his bent shoulder; and so he was
not killed, but will live
For sixty years, perhaps, and will do much
good or much evil. Another man in the same trench sat up to clean
his rifle, and had his arm in the air driving the cleaning rod down
the barrel, when a bullet passed through his lungs, and the gun fell
across his face, with the rod sticking in it, and he pitched forward
on his shoulder quite dead. If he had not cleaned his gun at that
moment he would probably be alive in Athens now, sitting in front of
a cafe and fighting the war over again. Viewed from that point, and
leaving out the fact that God ordered it all, the fortunes of the
game of war seemed as capricious as matching pennies, and as
impersonal as the wheel at Monte Carlo. In it the brave man did not
win because he was brave, but because he was lucky. A fool and a
philosopher are equal at a game of dice. And these men who threw
dice with death were interesting to watch, because, though they
gambled for so great a stake, they did so unconcernedly and without
flinching, and without apparently appreciating the seriousness of the
game.
There was a red-headed, freckled peasant boy, in dirty petticoats,
who guided Bass and myself to the trenches.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 22 of 202
Words from 5855 to 6112
of 55169
