(...)
"Life in the militia brought about many positive changes in my life. I was forced to bathe regularly, which I did not like at the start, but I endured, and this return to the habits of cleanliness successfully killed my bedeviling excrement obsession. I was fed, and the cots were comfortable, the barracks warm enough, and there was usually at least a little something to drink at night. We played cards, sang songs. A sturdy group of men, those soldiers. A bunch of orphans, really, alone in the world, passing time together, with nothing much to do."
(...)
(...)
"The gold from our buckets shone in dense shafts of light, and the branches and limbs of the surrounding trees were bathed in the glow of the river. There was a warm wind pushing down through the valley and off the surface of the water, it kissed my face and caused my hair to dance over my eyes. This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction, certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. At any rate, and perhaps this is just, it was not something we could hold on for very long. Everything immediately after this went just as black and wrong as could be imagined. Everything after this was death in one or the other way."
(...)
