Waterloo by Erckmann-Chatrian

At Sarrebourg we received tickets for lodgings. Mine was for the old printer Jarcisse, who knew Mr. Goulden and Aunt Gredel, and who made me dine at his table with my new comrade and bedfellow, Jean Buche, the son of a wood-cutter of Harberg, who had never eaten anything but potatoes before he was conscripted. He devoured everything, even to the bones that they set before us. But I was so melancholy, that to hear him crunch the bones made me nervous. Father Jarcisse tried to console me, but every word he said only increased my pain. We passed the remainder of that day and the following night at Sarrebourg. The next day we kept on our route to the village of Mezieres, the next to the Vic, and on to Soigne, till on the fifth day we came to Metz.

I do not need to tell you of our march, of the soldiers white with dust, how we passed one magazine after another, with our knapsacks on our backs, and our guns carried at will, talking, laughing, looking at the young girls as we passed through the villages, at the carts, the manure heaps, the sheds, the hills, and the valleys, without troubling ourselves about anything. And when one is sad and has left his wife at home, and dear friends too, whom he may never see again, all these pass before his eyes like shadows, and a hundred steps more and they too are unthought of.