Spectators’ patriotic enthusiasm for war machinery collapses quickly into bored waiting

Evidence

The little groups of civilians standing at the roadside—appearing by magic out of the empty woods to watch the procession—raised a few cheers when the first tanks passed, but they soon left off, discouraged: now they were waiting as if for a long freight train to pass; the men on the tanks rode by, mute, indifferent, and almost allegorical, like firemen sitting in rows along their ladders. — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 343

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 343
• XREF: connects to: Residents unironically accept war’s commercialization rather than critique it — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 873