The Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger — Read

After fourteen days in hospital and as long on leave I went back to the regiment, which was now in the line near Deux Nœuds, quite close to the well-known Grande Tranchée. After my arrival it remained two days there, and the same time in the old mountain town of Hattonchâtel. Then we entrained at Mars-la-Tour for the Somme region once more.

We detrained at Bohain again and went into quarters in the village of Brancourt, near by. This was a neighbourhood we often touched upon in later days. It was agricultural, and yet there was a loom in nearly every house. The inhabitants did not appeal to me. They were dirty and of a very low moral development. I was billeted on a cottage where lived a man and his wife and their daughter. I must own that in return for my money they made me most excellent dishes of eggs. The daughter told me over the first cup of coffee that she was going "to drink a good coffee with Poincaré after his return," by which she meant, give him a piece of her mind. I have never heard anyone so fluent in abuse as this filia hospitalis, particularly on the topic of a neighbour whom she accused of having lived in a certain street of St. Quentin. "Ah cette p'lure, cette pomme de terre pourrie, jetée sur un fumier. C'est la crème de la crème," she spluttered while she raged round the room stretching out her hands like claws in the vain search for an object on which to vent her wrath.