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Once they halted and stayed in one place long...Once they halted and stayed in one place long enough for it to assume familiar connotations, it was immeasurably harder to get them to fight againThey were dogs in their own kennel now, Cummings decided, and they would bark sullenly at orders Each day that elapsed without any fundamental change on the front would only increase their apathy, and yet Cummings knew that he was temporarily powerlessAfter intense preparation, he had mounted a large attack with good artillery plotting, some Air Corps bomber support which had been granted only after much pleading, had thrown his tanks into it, his reserve troops, and after a day the attack had ground down to nothing; the troops had halted before the most insignificant resistance, had gained in one small sector perhaps a quarter mileWhen they had done and the losses been counted, the minor alterations in his front line established, he had all of the Toyaku Line still before him, unbreached, unthreatenedIndeed, it was terrifyingThe communications from corps and army were growing progressively impatientSoon, like a traffic jam, that pressure would be backed up all the way to Washington, and Cummings could imagine without difficulty the conversations that must be going on in certain rooms of the Pentagon"Well, what's happening here, what's this, Anopopei, what's chanel classic handbag holding it up, whose division, Cummings, Cummings, well, get the man out of there, get someone else He had known it was dangerous to rest the troops for a week, but it was a gamble he had had to take while he finished the road, and it had boomerangedThe shock cut deeply into the General's confidenceThe process at most times was unbelievable to him, and he was suffering the amazement and terror of a driver who finds his machine directing itself, starting and halting when it desiresHe had heard of this, military lore was filled with such horror tales, but he had never imagined it would happen to himFor five weeks the troops had functioned like an extension of his own bodyAnd now, apparently without cause, or at least through causes too intangible for him to discover, he had lost his sensitive controlNo matter how he molded them now the men always collapsed into a sodden resistant mass like dishrags, too soft, too wet to hold any shape which might be given themAt night he would lie sleepless on his cot, suffering an almost unbearable frustration; there were times when he was burning with the impotence of his rageOne night he had lain for hours like an epileptic emerging from a coma, his hands clasping and unclasping endlessly, his eyes staring fixedly at the dim outlines of the ridgepole of his tentThe power, the dior replica handbags intensity of the urges within himself, inexpressible, balked, seemed to course through his limbs, beating in senseless fury against the confines of his bodyThere was everything he wanted to control, everything, and he could not direct even six thousand menEven a single man had been able to balk him He had made furious efforts for a time, launched that attack, had kept the troops patrolling constantly, but deep inside himself, unadmitted, he was becoming frightenedA new attack on which he had had Major Dalleson and the G-3 staff working for days had been called off several times alreadyAlways there had been good superficial reasons -- a large shipment of supplies was due from a few Liberty ships in a day or two, or else he felt it tnore advisable to capture first some minor features of land which might seriously impede the attackBut actually he was afraid; failure now would be fatalHe had expended too much on that first attack, and if this one foundered, weeks and possibly months would accrue before a third major drive could be initiatedBy that time he would be replaced His mind had become dangerously lassitudinous, and his body had been troubled for some time by a painful diarrheaIn an effort to scour his ailment he had had officers' mess suffer the most rigid inspections, but despite the new standards of cheap gucci bags cleanliness his diarrhea continuedIt was acutely difficult now to conceal his annoyance with the most insignificant details, and it was affecting everything about himHot wet days sloughed past, and the officers in headquarters snapped at each other, had petty quarrels and cursed the unremitting heat and rainNothing seemed to move in all the cramped choked spaces of the jungle, and it developed an attitude in which no one expected anything to moveThe division was going subtly and inevitably to pot, and he felt powerless to alter it Hearn suffered the results in all their immediacyWithout the disturbing and fascinating intimacy the General had granted him in his first weeks as an aide, the job had become reduced quickly to its onerous humiliating routineA change had come about in their relationship, quietly achieved, but its end product left him in a formal and obviously subordinate statusThe General no longer confided in him, no longer lectured him, and the duties of his job, which had been treated between them until now as a tacit joke, had become demanding and loathsomeAs the campaign floundered along day after day, the General became stricter about the discipline in his headquarters, and Hearn suffered the brunt of itEach morning Cummings made a point of inspecting his tent, and almost every time he miu miu bags in white delivered a criticism of the way Hearn had supervised the orderlyIt was always a quiet rebuke, uttered slyly, with a sidewise glance at Hearn, but it was disturbing and finally harassing And there were other tasks, silly pointless ones which assumed a galling character after they had continued long enoughOne time, almost two weeks after they had had their last long conversation on the night of the chess game, the General had stared at him blankly for a few seconds, and then had said, "Hearn, I think I'd like to have some fresh flowers in my tent each morning "Fresh flowers, sir?" And the General had given his mocking grin"Yes, it seems to me there're enough of them in the jungleSuppose you just tell Clellan to collect a few each morningGood God, man, it's a simple enough affair Simple enough, but it added a further tension between Clellan and himself, which Hearn detestedDespite himself, he paid greater attention to the way Clellan made up the General's tent each morning, and it became a humiliating duel between themTo his own surprise, Hearn discovered that the General was making him vulnerable; he was beginning to care that the tent was made up correctlyEach morning now he approached the General's tent with distaste, figuratively squared his shoulders, and then went in to continue his feud with vintage gucci watch Clella11:08 PM - Sunday, May 2, 2010
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