dic2027y

@@@@@A man could not walk without being scratched by the branches on either sideThe jungle was impenetrable at that point, and it would have taken an hour to cut one's way a hundred feet off the pathIn the night it was impossible to see anything and the smell of the wet foliage was chokingThe men had to walk in single file, drawn up closeEven at three feet they could not see one another, and they plodded down the trail with each man grasping the shirt of the man before himMartinez could hear them and judge his distance accordingly, but the others stumbled and collided with one another like children playing a game in the darkThey were bent over almost double, and the posture was cruelTheir bodies were outraged; they had been eating and sleeping with no rhythm at all for the last few hoursThey kept loosing gas whose smell was nauseating in the foul dense airThe men at the rear had the worst of it; they gagged and swore, tried not to breathe for a few seconds, and shuddered from fatigue and revulsionGallagher was at the end of the file, and every few minutes he would cough and curse"Cut out the goddam farting," he would shout, and the men in front would rouse themselves for a moment and laugh "Eatin' dust, hey, boy," Wilson muttered, and a few of them began to giggle Some of them began to fall asleep as they walkedTheir eyes had been closed almost the entire march, and they drowsed for the instant their foot was in the air and awakened as it touched the groundWyman had been plodding along for many minutes with no sensation at all; his body had grown numbHe and Ridges drowsed continually, and every now and then for ten or fifteen yards they would be completely asleepAt last they would weave off the trail and go pitching into the bushes stupidly before regaining their balanceIn the darkness such noises were terrifyingIt made the men uncomfortably aware of how close they were to the fightingA half mile away some rifles were firing "Goddammit," one of them would whisper, "can't you guys keep quiet?" The march must have taken them over half an hour, but after the first few minutes they no longer thought about timeCrouching and sliding through the mud with their hands on the man in front became the only thing they really knew; the trail was a treadmill and they no longer concerned themselves with where they were goingTo most of them the end of the march came as a surpriseMartinez doubled back and told them to be qui