Here are others. Good God! One, two, three, five of them; let me look again; yes—gray-headed! What—at twenty-seven! Tell me—what happened? They shrug their shoulders and pass on.
Then I see a long file of my own friends, some of them the wildest of the class, one with a baby in his arms, one with a child by the hand, another leading two. What? So-and-so married? So-and-so a pere de famille? Who would have thought it?
Here come others; some, with bowed heads and reddened eyes, sign to me sadly in passing. There is crape upon their sleeves.
Others, with heads high and flashing eyes, point exultantly to their breasts. Our college dream, the military medal—ah, lucky fellows!
And here are some, moving slowly, and so pale, so emaciated, that I hardly know them. Ah me! The surgeon's knife has probed those splendid statuesque limbs, once bared with such boyish pride on the banks of the Panaro; the surgeon's knife, seeking for German bullets, while the blood streamed and the amputated limbs dropped from the poor maimed trunks. Alas, poor friends! But at least they have remained with us, rewarded for their sacrifice by the love and gratitude of all.
But what's become of so-and-so?
He died on the march through Lombardy.
And so-and-so?
Killed by a mitrailleuse at Monte Croce.
And my friend so-and-so?