"It's only
that they are so different," she thought. "So different from the French
that they can never meet without hurting and jarring each other."
Russians slouched about in the snow, washing the pans. When they had
finished eating the Americans called to the Russians to eat what
remained of the bacon chips. Watching them eat with the hunger of
animals, they said:
"They starve them in the French barracks. We give them food here, or
they'd sure die."
"They give them what they can in the French barracks; the soldiers don't
get a ration like this, you know, even for themselves."
"Their fault for not kicking up a shindy," said the free-born Americans.
"We wouldn't stand it."
"You have no idea of poverty."
Food was even lying in the snow. A soldier cook thrust his head out of a
hut, crying: "Any one want any more chips?"
She knew that it was probably true what the Frenchman had said, that the
Americans shot the Russians as lightly as if they were sparrows. Yet
here they wept over the French ration that kept the Russians hungry,
though alive and well. What a curious mixture of sentiment and brutality
they were....
She pulled out her cigarette case and offered a cigarette to a man
standing near her. He took it and answered in a thick, lisping Jewish
accent, soft and uniformed: "I don't smoke, ma'am.
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