Evening star., 1918-02-14
TRENCH VETERANS
DISLIKE WAR TALK
They Feel No Intimacy With
Civilians, But Live in a
World Apart.
"THE STORY OF ALBERT"
ny HERBERT COREY.

BY HERBERT COREY.
PARIS. January I'm time the war
becomes unreal to the observer. At
the front one sees tired and quiet men
in wet bitches. They answer his ques-
tions respectfully or with lassitude. In
the base towns one sees them on the
streets or sitting head to head over
their pots of thin beer or their wine
glasses in some dirty alberge. There is
never any real intimacy between them
and an observer. Their interests are
quite apart from his interests. Even
when one gets well acquainted with a
soldier. the lighting man does not want
to recall the obscene filth of the trench,
the horror of the crawling straw, the
days and nights when the wet clothes
freeze upon the skin. ! know one
young French soldier very well. He
one reminiscence he has volunteered
came last night
When ] was in the legion" said he.
IAN Algerian one night mixed beer and
whisky and brandy and absinthe and
niggerhead rum. Then he drank a lot
OF it,"
The story ended there, rather alb
ruptly. as il seemed to me. After de-
cent interval l prompted him. l want
ed to know what had happened to the
unfortunate Algerian.
Oh said he. Il saw-<him crawling
over the embankment<ab bout midnight,
with his knife in his teeth Just be-
fore dawn he came back with nit
railleuse and two German heads"
Life Goes On
At the rear life goes on-somewhat
sadly. perhaps. but "ca marche." as the
French say. 1t goes on. Ones rooms
are not so well heated and the railway
cars are packed like peach crates and
the tramS are uncomfortable and taXis
are not. There is talk of high prices
and the crisis of tobacco and new
taxes. Not much talk. nor violent talk
Each seems insulated aGainst all others
by his own little aura of sorrow and
care. Then, as though during a night
of troubled dreams. one springs broad
awake a the call of terrifying real
ity. one wakens to what war is. 1t
comes home The little circle of friends
who have come back from time to time
on permission frantic to crowd into
few days memories that shall last
them for another six months, is sud
denly broken into:
Andre hasn't heard from Eve for
weeks now" said George last night
Her letters have come back stamped
not found
No one knows why he is called
Eve" One of the handsomest boys
have ever known. with huge. soft black
eyes and the poseless grace of kit
ten. Rather discontented face. on the
whole. He resented the war, for it
broke his plans and perhaps cost him
his future. Even after he got his third
citation he did not wear his cross when
he came to town. That was .'chichi." he
said-swank, an English boy would
have said. Then at the front one day
a she'll demolished the car he was driv-
ing and bit of it struck his cross and
bent il so that it rolled and sparkled
on his breast. 1t delighted him. He
was childlike in showing it.
II shall never again go without it,"
said he. The cross itself has been
And Albert, who went away half
frantic four months ago. to go back
to his tank. He was frightened, for he
had been in tank long enough to
know what the order meant. Men only
lived six weeks in a tank. he said. He
had the statistics of tanklife at his
fingers ends. He reeled off the names
of men who had lived a day. a week.
month, two months. The average was
but six weeks. He had already outrun
the average. He made rather a fool Of
himself. his friends thought. when he
went away. talked at random, and
threw away his money and quarreled
with the girl he was to marry-"so she
should not worry about me-" His
friends excused it all.
you know" they said to each other,
he is going back to the tanks"