Young staff officers were walking, jostled by beggars. Jo called
to an old man who was driving a cart full of modern furniture, his face
drawn into wrinkles of misery--
"Where are you going?"
"Ne snam," he answered, staring hopelessly before him.
Wounded men were everywhere, tottering and hobbling along, for none
wanted to be taken prisoners. Some had ship's biscuit, which they tried
to soften in the dirty ditch water, others were lapping like dogs out
of the puddles. Sometimes a motor far ahead stuck in the mud, and we had
to wait often half an hour until it could be induced to move. Gipsies
passed, better mounted and worse clad than other folk, some of them half
naked. Many soldiers had walked through their opankies and their feet
were bound up with rag. Why in this country of awful mud has the opankie
been invented? It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a
series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which
penetrates through it in all directions.
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