While plodding through the mud of the courtyard, Fandor said to himself:
"The third of the second means, I suppose, that I have the honour of belonging to the third company of the second battalion."
Fandor gazed with lively curiosity at the immense building in which he was to pass his days and nights for he did not know how long a time. As he scrutinised this enormous pile, standing harsh and stark in its uncompromising and ordered strength, as he took stock of the vast courtyards and the stony lengths of imprisoning walls, he got an idea of that formidable organisation called a regiment, which itself is but an infinitesimal part of that great whole we call an army. Appreciating as he now did the importance, the immutability, the regularity of the movements of the military machine, with its wheels within wheels, Fandor asked himself if it were possible to carry through the programme he had drawn up for himself. Could he, at one and the same time, trick the French Army and save it?... He had taken his precautions: he had read and reread Vinson's manual, now his manual. Mentally he had put himself in the skin of a corporal: he was letter perfect, and now he must cover himself with the mantle of Vinson—for the greater glory of France!
He could not help laughing when he read the list of his facial characteristics: chin, round; nose, medium; face, oval; eyes, grey. Vague enough this to be safe! Fandor's hair was dark chestnut: Vinson's was brown. Vinson and Fandor were sufficiently alike as to height and figure: besides, soldiers' uniforms were not an exact fit.
"Here you are, Corporal!" announced the orderly. He pointed to a vast room at the end of a corridor. The bugle had just sounded the reveille and the barrack-room was humming like a hive of awakened bees. The orderly had vanished. Fandor stood at the threshold, hesitating: his self-confidence had gone down with a run. It was a momentary lapse. Pulling himself together he walked into the room.
When giving him his instructions, Vinson had warned Fandor, that when it came to settling down in barracks he would find nothing to hand.
"Among other little items, your bed will be missing. As corporal you have a right to round on them. Row them hot and good—start reprisals straight away. The men will pretend not to understand, but insist—don't take no for an answer; take whatever you want right and left—in the end you will get properly settled in."
Fandor carried out these instructions. Before he had been ten minutes in the room, men were rushing in all directions, fussing, jostling one another, coming, going, demanding of all the echoes in that huge white-washed barn of a barrack-room dormitory:
"Where is the palliasse of Corporal Vinson!"
"Find me the bolster of Corporal Vinson!"