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Infantry Soldier

Hollow cheeked, eyes sunken in their sockets, yet burning with a strange flame under the shadow of his helmet, with an expression at the same time defiant and suffering, the man is only held together by his overstretched nerves and willpower. He has brought back from the Orient a slow fever which is undermining the strength of spirit that has kept him going in the harshest conditions, where it seemed that everyone and everything has abandoned him. Life was terrible for the soldiers in Macedonia, in trenches cut from the rock itself, or under canvas for years at a time, without water except for that carried swaying on the backs of supply mules, with no letters from home, in a sector where not a single tree grows, where as the leaden sun sinks from the sky, feverish phantasms begin to prowl. But the army of the Orient held firm; its contribution was recognised and it was the first to see the wall shaken and the enemy sink to its knees.