The men stood stock-still and scowled sullenly. Their numb hands barely held the rifles. Their legs had lost their litheness, and when at last Globa commanded, “Forward march!” in a voice that had become gratingly hoarse from the cussing, many of the men could not swing their legs properly enough and bring them down with a uniform thump on the frozen ground.
And again there was vile cursing, face slapping, and fisticuffs.
The snowstorm persisted for three days; all that time Globa tortured his inadequately dressed company. What made it still worse was that the men had no felt boots on, while the temperature had dropped to twenty-five degrees below zero with a strong north-westerly wind. A half of the men got their noses, ears and cheeks frostbitten, but most of all it was their feet wh
