After journeying with many complications and pauses, there came months of monotonous life in the camp. He believed that real war was a series of death struggles with only a small time in between for sleep and meals; but ever since his regiment settled in the field the army merely sat still and tried to keep warm.
He eventually thought back to his old ideas. The greeklike struggles of men faded away. Men behaved better and more timidly. Secular and religious education effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or either firm finance held the passions in check.
He grew to regard himself merely as a part of a vast blue demonstration. His province, to look out as far as he could, for his personal comfort. For recreation, he twiddled his thumbs and speculated on the thoughts which must agitate the minds of the generals. Also, he drilled and drilled and reviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed.
The only foes he saw were some pickets along the river bank. They appeared to be a suntanned, philosophical lot, who sometimes shot reflectively at the blue pickets. When reproached for this afterward, they usually expressed sorrow, and swore by their gods that the guns exploded without their permission. The youth, on guard duty one night, conversed across the stream with one of them. He, a slightly ragged man, spat skillfully between his shoes and possessed a great fund of bland and infantile assurance. The youth liked him personally.
“Yank,” the other informed him, “yer a right dum good feller.” This sentiment, floated to him upon the still air, and made him temporarily regret war.
Various veterans told him tales. Some talked about gray bewhiskered hordes advancing with relentless curses and chewing tobacco valiantly; tremendous bodies of fierce soldiery sweeping along like huns. Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men firing despondent powders….
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