They scrambled down the rough path of the knoll, through a thin growth of birch, passed into the denser mist below.
They found themselves suddenly among long ranks of resting infantry squatting and lying in close proximity to their piled arms. The feld-grau uniforms merged, were lost in the fog, but there was an indefinable suggestion of the presence of many thousands. The Oberst and his guest might walk where they would, the shadowy grey forms still loomed up out of the mist. All were cheerful and confident. The officers in little groups smiling as they conversed, bent over a map. The men grinning. They were waiting for the guns to level the path for their "promenade."
At last the ranks of infantry ceased. They came upon a field battery that was firing furiously. The guns were in the open, their upturned caissons—lid upright to form a shield, exposing the pigeon-holed bases of the cartridges—close against the left wheel. Grouped behind each were the busy gunners, in rapid movement of arms and torso, crouching, labouring with swift concentrated intensity as they passed the long, gleaming projectile from hand to hand, thrust it into the breech, closed and fired. Behind them was a heap of brass cartridge-cases, the flat compartmented baskets that had held three rounds. The watching officers, helmeted, in long closely-buttoned coats, stood behind their sections. The battery hurled out its stream of death in absolute immunity. No enemy shell came to seek it. The fog veiled its target.
Beyond that battery was another, in the open like the first, almost wheel to wheel with it. And beyond that, another and yet others, an endless chain of them, all scorning concealment, all firing as fast as sweating, straining men could load and pull the lever. From behind came the prolonged, heavy, linked detonations of yet other batteries of more weighty metal. Overhead the rumble and rush of hurrying shells was as the sound of heavy traffic.
The neutral and his guide turned eastwards towards the zone of the great howitzers. Once more they were entangled in waiting masses of grey-clad infantry. The mist had thinned, permitted quite long vistas. Everywhere there was infantry, battalion upon battalion, regiment on regiment, brigade after brigade. The time had passed—by the neutral, at least, almost unnoticed, so much was there for his brain to register—it was now almost noon. The infantry was standing to its ranks, forming into column of route, marching forward with songs and shouts, their spiked helmets decorated with sprigs of fir. "Vorwärts!" came the sharp, barking commands of the officers. "Nach Verdun!" shouted the excited men, drunk with the prospect of superbly easy victory.
And ever the indefatigable batteries hammered and crashed, spewing forth death in volumes that the men they served might live. From behind every hedge, every hillock; in long lines across the open—so many that they could afford to neglect the enemy's reply; their tongues of flame shot out, flickered indefinitely repeated into the distance. Their infinitely reiterated detonations smote splittingly upon the ear, were gathered into one overpowering roar.
The dark mass of the Forêt de Spincourt was riven by red flame that lit and was gone momentarily in every part of its recesses. As the two officers approached it, they saw a faint film of smoke hanging over the tree-tops, saw the quick flashes gleaming through the undergrowth of the verge. They entered its obscurity. The air choked one with the fumes of burnt explosive, beat against the face in gusts with the disturbance of the multiplied discharges. The wood was a nest of howitzer batteries. On platforms of concrete and timber the monsters squatted, bowed their head to receive yet another shell, raised it again with slow, determined movement, the great round jaws gaping upward to the sky, belched with a sudden eructation of vivid flame, a tremendous shock of which the stunning noise was only part. The spectator behind the gun, looking upward, saw a black object speeding high into the air, rapidly diminishing, the while a rain of twigs pattered down upon his face. As the barrel was lowered again, the breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle. Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar.
Further within the wood were still greater monsters, so huge that their aliment was trundled to them on light rails, swung into their maw by overhanging cranes. The earth shook, the trees rocked, with the vehemence of their discharge.
"Frau Bertha has a most persuasive voice, nicht wahr?" said the Oberst to his guest. The neutral agreed as courteously as was possible in this chaos of bludgeoning noise. His dark eyes rested a little contemptuously on the dapper, somewhat podgy colonel whose soul, even in this crisis of nations, was still essentially the soul of a commercial traveller. The order to Krupp's was not yet given.