Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 31

The chief commissariat officer, keeper of the hatred of the whole regiment, was for the time being lord of creation. You're a rogue if you talk of the future; it's the present that counts. To invoke posterity is to declaim to an audience of maggots. At night in those war villages, the adjutant herded his human cattle in readiness for the great slaughterhouses that had just been opened. The adjutant was king! The King of Death! Adjutant Cretelle! Just so. Nobody was stronger than he - and no one was even as strong as he was, except some adjutant of theirs on the other side.