Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

214 MILITARY LIFE.
ground in straight lines, at equal intervals ; every thing in
perfect order ;
it is a camp which looks as if painted. Opposite
the openings of the tents, at the back and on the sides,
rise the
huts and sheds of green boughs (they have despoiled
the trees
in the poor fields in the neighborhood, so that the colonel got
.into a perfect rage), and from the branches (like triumphal
arches) wave garlands of wild poppies and wheat interlined.
Here and there, on the top of a cane stuck into the ground,
float several flags, made of a red cravat, a bit of shirt, and a
blue handkerchief, which looks like green. In the tents, is a
confusion of straw, clothes, knapsacks, rags, cartridge-boxes,
gun-stocks, and bayonets. Between the tents are stretched
ropes, on which are displayed those half drawers, which are
supposed by the government to reach the ankle, but which in
reality only come down to the knees on the legs of the soldiers,
as nature made them.
To the right of all these tents, in a parallel line with the
shortest side of the camp, there is another row of tents, conical
in shape and higher, larger, better stretched, and more comfortably
arranged than the others ;
the tents of the officers ;
from
that of the colonel, which is the nearest to the road, down to
that of the officers of the last company.
Farther to the right, in
a parallel
line with the tents of the officers, along the dividing
ditch, is a long row of wagons overladen with boxes, trunks,
bundles, and a hundred various articles. Behind the last
wagon, a troop of horses and mules tied to the trunk of the
trees. Along the opposite side the left side an unending
row of black kettles, placed in groups at regular distances, and
between each group, ovens made of heaped-up
stones and
bricks, and piles of ashes and burnt sticks, brushwood, and