"Oh, I don't know. Everyone feels like that."
"I don't see," said Martin, "why it shouldn't last for ten or twenty years. Wars have before...."
"How long have you been at the front?"
"Six months, off and on."
"After another six months you'll know why it can't go on."
"I don't know; it suits me all right," said the man on the other side of Martin, a man with a jovial red rabbit-like face. "Of course, I don't like being dirty and smelling and all that, but one gets accustomed to it."
"But you are an Alsatian; you don't care."
"I was a baker. They're going to send me to Dijon soon to bake army bread. It'll be a change. There'll be wine and lots of little girls. Good God, how drunk I'll be; and, old chap, you just watch me with the women...."
"I should just like to get home and not be ordered about," said the first man. "I've been lucky, though," he went on; "I've been kept most of the time in reserve. I only had to use my bayonet once."
"When was that?" asked Martin.