In the distance a mine exploded, giving a sudden shock to the ground. A part of the trench had blown up, it was a piece of the "Death Trench" that had disappeared in the air. An aëroplane then came and shooting followed it. The cannon now made its voice heard. The time seems long when one is waiting and watching and, as the wounded man's face changed, our hearts grew fuller and fuller, and we suffered acutely as we watched this life passing slowly away. Under the slight moustache, the white teeth could now be seen, the uninjured eye had lost its expression and brilliancy, and only one of the slender, sun-burnt hands moved.
The sky over our heads began to get paler and paler. The white clouds then turned grey and mauve. The hour was approaching for us to leave and, creeping along, we went to see how the land lay, in order to decide which way to go.
The green ground was all pierced with shell holes newly made in the dark earth. Spikes were to be seen everywhere, ours made of wood, and the others of iron, protected by barbed wire. Rubbish of all kinds strewed the soil. On the other side of the winding Yser, the green and brown dyke looked like a cliff rising above the water, that wonderful dyke against which the barbarous wave of invaders had lashed in fury and then died away.
It was just the moment when the blazing light fades and every different colour stands out clearly.
The piles of the two landing stages, made of planks, were plunged in the water.
One of us pushing and the other pulling, we brought the stretcher to the little trench. The man who had been crouching like a rat at the riverside was to be seen again. He gave a low whistle and the raft came gliding along the water. On returning, weighed down by us, it dipped in front, thus breaking the wavelets.
The entrance was very narrow. We had to carry the wounded man through labyrinths of passages with their walls of sacks of earth. This dyke, which, from the other side, looks so beautiful in all its greenery under the blue sky, showed up its ugliness and misery on our side. The whole trench had been devastated by the bombardment and behind it was nothing but a chaos of torn-up earth amidst pools of water.
In the distance could be seen the plain, finishing in the horizon by a thin band of trees and houses, outlined in black against the sunset. The bushes nearer to us were of a dense, green colour and the sky gradually became livid and heavy, with a few streaks of bluish green.
Darkness was coming over us and had already swooped down on the passages, with their medley of rubbish. The wounded man was now lying quite motionless, unconscious, with his eye swollen and his face rigid. He was wrapped round in a blanket.
Caps in hand, officers and soldiers watched him pass away. With their earth-coloured coats, they looked like so many shadows. They listened in silence to the last prayers.