December 8, 1914.
Half awake, I stretch out my hand to see whether Dutrex is there. His palliasse is deserted, his rug folded up. I raise myself on my elbow. All the others are still asleep, lying like long mute mummies. I draw on my shoes. At the main entrance, the sentries, hands in pockets, heads between their shoulders, are stamping their feet, their eyes white with cold. “Guten Morgen!”—“Guten Morgen!” I grope my way down the stair and along the passage. The lamps have gone out. There is a light in No. 22. I go in. Dutrex is shaving; his little mirror is perched on the vice. In front of him stands a smoky lamp. All around is darkness. Bouquet passes from one cauldron to another, singing softly and sentimentally:
La petite Française
Qui m’attend là-bas
A les yeux de braise
Le cœur de lilas.…[30]
The kitchen is full of sulphurous fumes. “What time is it?”—“Five o’clock.” Dutrex has finished shaving. I take his place before the mirror and the lamp with the broken chimney. Some one knocks at the door. A little man comes in. He wears a fatigue-cap; his head is bowed, his face is tied up in a handkerchief, he holds his left cheek with both hands. He looks at us like a whipped dog. “I’m in such pain!”—“What’s the matter?” asks Bouquet, who is tender-hearted. The poor fellow is unable to speak plainly. “I have been walking up and down the corridors for a long time. I can’t keep still. My wound is gnawing at me. It seems to be screaming there, just under the ear!”—“Poor chap, you must see Laloux, but he is still asleep. Sit down there between the stoves. There’s a stool for you. Drink a mug of coffee while you’re waiting. That’ll warm you.”—“Yes, I’m perished with cold.”
Instead of a cheek he has a great violet crevasse with lines of scar tissue radiating from it. He was struck by a bullet which passed in obliquely through the nose and on its way out shattered half the left side of the face, including the articulation of the jaw. He has an abscess forming in the internal ear, which is pretty sure to kill him. While I shave, I look at this reservist.
He arrived with the last batch of convalescent wounded. Most of them were but half cured. They were sent away from Ingolstadt to make room for refugees from Pomerania, children, women, and old men, broken down through privation. The Russian wave is washing these refugees by thousands into the southern hutments.