"Fall in!"
New orders have just arrived and we are to move on again.
Before leaving, I pick up a fragment of shell over which I stumbled.
It is fifty centimetres long by fifteen wide, with jagged edges like
the teeth of a saw. I contemplate this terrible thing lying heavy in
my hand. To what kind of a shell, swift and growling, must it have
belonged? This fragment must be one of those which cleanly sweep away
an arm or leg, tear off a head, or cut a man completely in two. And
holding it thus in my hand, heavy and cold, I remember a poor little
cyclist who was killed close to us in Septsarges Wood--one leg taken
away at the hip and the lower part of his abdomen laid open.
Trees and a shimmer of green on a wide road, away to the north. Night
is falling. Suddenly through the grayness we find ourselves looking
upon some ruins--we have reached Erize-la-Petite.
* * * * *
Another road skirting the line which links Rembercourt with Vauxmarie
and Beuzée. In the ditches, hunched up or stretched at full length, are
human corpses. A single corpse is a rare spectacle. As a rule they are
lying huddled together as if seeking to warm each other. The failing
light reveals blue coats and red trousers; Frenchmen; more Frenchmen,
in fact nothing but Frenchmen! Judge my enthusiasm on finding some
Boches among them! I fall out several times to make sure that these
really are Boches. The foe cannot have had the time to hide away that
lot!
The night becomes black and corpses are no longer visible. But they
are always there, at the bottom of the ditches, on the slopes at the
very edge of the road. We realize their presence even in the dark. By
shielding the eyes and peering hard, it is possible to see the eerie
heaps which have lost all resemblance to that of which they are made....
Not a word in the ranks; nothing but the regular tramp, tramp, before
and behind me; occasionally someone coughs, a little dryly, or a man
spits. That is all. It must be cold, yet my head and hands are burning,
and my will struggles to subdue an uncontrollable inclination to turn
to my right where the cool waters of the Aire, flowing by the roadside,
are betrayed by the stagnant pools under the trees.
An unexpected halt! The men bump their noses against the packs of the
file in front. Confusion and much swearing. Then quick commands:
"Quartermasters prepare rations for distribution."
It is the best of all signs. The day's march is ended.
* * * * *
Come! Head erect and fists clenched! No more of that weakness that a
moment ago assailed me. We must look unmoved on these poor dead and
seek from them the inspiration of hate. It was the Boche in his flight
who dragged these sorry things to the side of the road, who arranged
this horrid spectacle for our express benefit, and we must never rest
until the brute has drunk our cup of vengeance to the dregs.
Impotent and childish is the fury that only inspires us with rage
and the passion for vengeance instead of fear, as our foe hopes and
believes.
Besides, every step forward now presents us with eloquent testimony of
the completeness of the defeat they have suffered--helmets torn and
pierced by our bullets, crushed and shattered by our shells; rusty
bayonets; broken cartridge-belts, still full. To the left of the road
in the fields are some overturned ammunition wagons and gun-carriages
in pieces, the horses lying dead in a heap. In the ditch is the
carriage of a shattered machine-gun; one can see the hole made by the
shell--a 75. What a state the gun on that carriage must have been in!
And the machine-gunners? At the bottom of the hole! Ammunition belts of
coarse white canvas lie coiled in puddles.
We pick up some boots full of rain-water. I wonder whether the men
from whom we took them walked barefooted through the mud merely for
pleasure? In another hole we find the men themselves. Further on again
we encounter crosses bearing German inscriptions. Here then are the
Ottos, the Friedrichs, the Karls, and the Hermans! Each cross bears
four, five and even six names. The Germans were in a hurry; they buried
their men in bunches.
A cross higher than the others attracts and holds our attention; it
bears no more than three words deeply carved in big capitals: