azim78lenk

@@@@@The communications from corps and army were growing progressively impatientSoon, like a traffic jam, that pressure would be backed up all the way to Washington, and Cummings could imagine without difficulty the conversations that must be going on in certain rooms of the Pentagon"Well, what's happening here, what's this, Anopopei, what's holding it up, whose division, Cummings, Cummings, well, get the man out of there, get someone else He had known it was dangerous to rest the troops for a week, but it was a gamble he had had to take while he finished the road, and it had boomerangedThe shock cut deeply into the General's confidenceThe process at most times was unbelievable to him, and he was suffering the amazement and terror of a driver who finds his machine directing itself, starting and halting when it desiresHe had heard of this, military lore was filled with such horror tales, but he had never imagined it would happen to himFor five weeks the troops had functioned like an extension of his own bodyAnd now, apparently without cause, or at least through causes too intangible for him to discover, he had lost his sensitive controlNo matter how he molded them now the men always collapsed into a sodden resistant mass like dishrags, too soft, too wet to hold any shape which might be given themAt night he would lie sleepless on his cot, suffering an almost unbearable frustration; there were times when he was burning with the impotence of his rageOne night he had lain for hours like an epileptic emerging from a coma, his hands clasping and unclasping endlessly, his eyes staring fixedly at the dim outlines of the ridgepole of his tentThe power, the intensity of the urges within himself, inexpressible, balked, seemed to course through his limbs, beating in senseless fury against the confines of his bodyThere was everything he wanted to control, everything, and he could not direct even six thousand menEven a single man had been able to balk him He had made furious efforts for a time, launched that attack, had kept the troops patrolling constantly, but deep inside himself, unadmitted, he was becoming frightenedA new attack on which he had had Major Dalleson and the G-3 staff working for days had been called off several times alreadyAlways there had been good superficial reasons -- a large shipment of supplies was due from a few Liberty ships in a day or two, or else he felt it tnore advisable to capture first some minor features of land which might seriously impede the attackBut actually he was afraid; failure now would be fatalHe had expended too much on that first attack, and if this one foundered, weeks and possibly months would accrue before a third major drive could be initiatedBy that time he would be replaced His mind had become dangerously lassitudinous, and his body had been troubled for some time by a painful diarrheaIn an effort to scour his ailment he had had officers' mess suffer the most rigid inspections, but despite the new standards of cleanliness his diarrhea continuedIt was acutely difficult now to conceal his annoyance with the most insignificant details, and it was affecting everything about himHot wet days sloughed past, and the officers in headquarters snapped at each other, had petty quarrels and cursed the unremitting heat and rai