Status Updates From The Good Soldier Švejk

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

Lieutenant Dub used the opportunity to deliver a lengthy sermon on how a soldier ought to conduct himself and what he duties were towards his fatherland and the Monarch, who was the supreme commander and highest military authority. Of coure there should be elements of this kind in the battalion they must be eradicated, punished and clapped into gaol.