"They starve them in the French barracks. We give them food here, or they'd sure die."
"They give them what they can in the French barracks; the soldiers don't get a ration like this, you know, even for themselves."
"Their fault for not kicking up a shindy," said the free-born Americans.
"We wouldn't stand it."
"You have no idea of poverty."
Food was even lying in the snow. A soldier cook thrust his head out of a hut, crying: "Any one want any more chips?"
She knew that it was probably true what the Frenchman had said, that the Americans shot the Russians as lightly as if they were sparrows. Yet here they wept over the French ration that kept the Russians hungry, though alive and well. What a curious mixture of sentiment and brutality they were….
She pulled out her cigarette case and offered a cigarette to a man standing near her. He took it and answered in a thick, lisping Jewish accent, soft and uniformed: "I don't smoke, ma'am. But I'll keep it as a souvenir give to me by the only lady I've seen in three months."
"That's really true? You haven't seen a woman for three months?"
"No, ma'am. Not a one. It must seem strange to you to hear us say that.
Just as though you were a zebra."
"There's some one over by your car," said the sentry, who had no idea of silence at his post. She got up quickly and flew back to the other barracks, jumping the deep pools of water and mud and the little heaps of soiled snow, started up the car and drove back to the citadelle for lunch.