Explore "The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
-"Yes, in this present quality of war / Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot / Lives so in hope, as in an early spring / We see the appearing buds, which to prove fruit / Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair / That frosts will bite them." -SHAKESPEARE
Bourne roused himself, and, after a few minutes of dubious consciousness, sat up and looked round him, at his sleeping companions, and then at the rifles stacked round the tent-pole, and the ring of boots surrounding the riflebutts. His right hand finding the opening in his shirt front, he scratched pleasurably at his chest. He was dirty, and he was lousy; but at least, and he thanked God for it, he was not scabby.