That's a quote from my 1945 copy of
First Encounter a book that's actually a reprint of his first novel
One Man's Initiation.It was written about WWI and he had it reprinted in the middle of WWII. He meant it politically as he did most things. John Dos Passos had his career ruined by politics, but it was he who was so overtly to be political When the tides shifted on McCarthy, he failed to roll back.
"Red sweating faces, drooping under the hard rims of helmets, turned to the ground with the struggle with the weight of equipment; rows and patches of faces were the only warmth in the desolation of putty-coloured mud and bowed mud-coloured bodies and dripping mud-coloured sky."
In that short quote he uses a lot of repetition. Repetition is a tool. Over-use is common, but Dos Passos was a master. He first describes each noun as it passes except "ground." Red faces, hard rims, ... then does not describe the ground. But then used that ground to describe everything else: putty colored mud, mud-colored bodies, mud-colored sky. It's perfectly balanced.
