Status Updates From The Good Soldier Švejk

One thing was certain: no one knew at what hour and in what state the major left the general that night. They were all of them in such a condition that no one noticed his absence. The general was even confused about who of the company was speaking. The major had already been more than two hours away when the general, twirling his moustaches and smiling in an idiotic way. called out: 'Very well said, major'.

AND so when Švejk, clad in his Russian greatcoat and cap, had been taken for a Russian prisoner escaping from a village near Felsztyn, and was writing his despairing screams in charcoal on the wall, and when at the transit, he tried to explain everything in detail to a passing officer, one of the Hungarian soldiers guarding the transport of prisoners prodded his shoulder and said: 'Get into line, you Russian pig!"

When all the preparations had been made for the departure according to the given dispositions, the brigadier, who had been so smartly dislodged by the Hanoverian colonel, made the whole battalion fall in in the usual square formation and made a speech to them. He loved making speeches and, when he did so, muddled everything up, and when he had nothing more to say he remem-bered the field post