Word: riglioni
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Tough, able Sergeant Riglioni, himself only fitfully rational, blurredly watches the breakup. It takes the form of a mania for light. At night, huddled sleeplessly in bomb-crushed cellars, the men crave candles. They try scraping wax from ration boxes, but the lights they make burn only for seconds. Then a replacement shows up, squeamish in combat but eerily skillful at finding large quantities of wax. He guards his secret, but the obsessed men find it out: the wax comes from holy figures in household shrines and churches...
Rich Symbolism. The men make candles. With the abundant light comes madness-or perhaps, indeed, the aberration is sanity. They will not fight. Riglioni refuses to lead them. The colonel's aide tries to pry them from their cellar refuge and finds himself looking down the barrel of a Thompson gun. The blowhard captain arrives, sermonizes plaintively at the figures crouched around the huge, 9-ft. candles, and is told to take his precious behind back to headquarters. He leaves. The Germans counterattack. The men are killed...
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