From time to time he threw a quick glance, like the flick of a whip, to make sure that we were in step.
I thought I was going again to the old barracks, where I did my term of service, but I had a sadder disappointment than was reasonable.

Across some land where building was going on, deeply trenched, beplastered and soiled with white, we arrived at a new barracks, sinisterly white in a velvet pall of fog.

In front of the freshly painted gate there was already a crowd of men like us, clothed in subdued civilian hues in the coppered dust of the first rays of day.
They made us sit on forms round the guard room.

We waited there all the day.

As the scorching sun went round it forced us to change our places several times.