The beautiful countryside has become chaotic following this avalanche of projectiles of the preceding days. The bombardment is always frightful. The snow which has fallen the night before makes going bad and one slips and stumbles incessantly. How difficult it is to follow such a road at night when you haven't slept for three days!
Again I have been made a scout and I ask myself if I will be not soon, in my turn, one of these hideous corpses which I pass each instant and which have been snapped up by death along this damned road. It seems now as if the shells were searching you out and rifle bullets followed you——
In the semi-moonlit shadow I perceive two stretcher-bearers caught by death as they carry their wounded; the one in the lead is on his knees, the other already down, both clutching the handles of the litter.
I continue my route. Before arriving at the bifurcation of the two roads to Ornes and Beaumont, I cannot longer recognize my direction, so great has been the change in the aspect of the surroundings during the last three days.
I overtake two men who, en pères peinards,[22] happy at meeting someone, suggest we go together. They walk without haste; the terrain has become very difficult to follow and it is dark——
Suddenly one of them makes a false step, he has not seen an immense shell-hole, and he falls forward head first——
His comrade, on the edge of the crater, bursts with laughter.
"You're not crazy. You know well enough the subway is closed at this time of night!"
AT THE WEST CORNER OF CHAUME WOOD, MIDNIGHT.