"Fire!"
The horrible engine of war did its work and, in a trice, it had mown down all these figures. Five minutes later, some more figures rose and these too were brought down by the machine-gun. An enemy machine-gun now replied to us, but, fortunately, it fired too high and too much to the left. For three hours, we kept this game up. The Germans were nailed to the ground, and each time they attempted to get up, they were swept down again by our firing. Finally, they retired and disappeared, crawling along in the darkness.
We then went back to our post. A never-to-be-forgotten sight awaited us there. Snysters was lying in the middle of the room. His face was turned to the sky and he was sleeping his long sleep under a beam of light. Just above his head, by the gaping breach in the ceiling, the moon shed a white ray which surrounded his face with a halo of glory. It looked very pure and very peaceful, and left all the rest of his body hidden in dense darkness. I have never seen a finer mortuary than the one which the heavens had thus raised to this martyr to his country. And it seemed to me that the soul of the hero had risen gloriously, in this beautiful ray of light, to the kingdom above.
An hour later, the body was taken away. Frentzen wrapped it in his own cloak, because it was a better one than that of the dead man, and he carried it out alone. Whilst he was digging a grave, swearing all the time between his teeth, I noticed that he kept furtively wiping away his tears.
When he had finished his task, he came back to me.
"Lieutenant," he said, "I knew it would happen to him. I always told him so. He was always swearing like the devil, it was sure to happen to him.... Damn! Damn!"
And swearing away now for two men, instead of one, he went on growling quietly.
Before the dawn, we had again repaired the damage. And then the day broke, rosy and smiling, in the limpid horizon, lighting up a pile of German corpses and of ruins in the midst of our own ruins. And when I had gone up to my post once more, a blackbird came and perched on the top of the roof and warbled his gay song to the echoes. I understood then that only one thing matters in our existence, and that is to so order one's soul that, high up in the ideal azure, it shall sing its song in spite of the storm. It must be a soul which, free and strong, shall continue its own way, always ready for any struggle, always ready for martyrdom, and always ready to rise heavenwards!
March, 1915.