chunk: Three years ! When he comes back he is a man and has notions of his own. Three years! What are the chances he comes back at all? Bosnia! Where in the world is that? My God, how they hate it! They must go through with it, though they hate it all-every moment. They hate to be packed into railway carriages like so many dried heads of maize in a barn... and the rude alien sergeant with his 'Vorwarts!' and 'Marsch!' and 'Rechts!' and 'Links!' I ask you in the name of the Holy Virgin what kind of gibberish is that?
  On this particular fourteenth of September it is Andor's turn due to go. On the eve preceding it, at the village merrymaking, as the whole population spends its last happy hours trying to forget the hideous events that will occur in the morning, he tokens himself to Elsa the village beauty.