Chapter Seventeen
Captain Réviron despised every kind of sickness, especially the category described as neuropathies. The moustachioed captain regarded these new-fangled ‘sicknesses of the mind’ as just bunkum and hokum, ‘swinging the lead’ – scams used by liars to avoid their goddamn duty.
But when it came to real soldiers, Réviron understood their needs. When HQ in Sainte-Menehould, the capital of the Argonne region, sent a message that it might still be a considerable time before the troops were relieved, Réviron organized little outings to various Rues de Serpentine1 in the region, and ordered his medical staff to distribute prophylactics for these visits. It grated on him that those rubbers were made in Germany, bought in massive numbers just before the war, but he could bear that b
