Then, suddenly, he heard a high, sharp whistling through the air, and the bullet spattered the earth viciously in front of him. A report cracked lazily out from the trees. Another whistle, another, and the pattering grew nearer. Coco dropped flat on the ground, and crawled cautiously up to a big rock and looked over the top, watching. Still nothing was visible. The balls came faster now; but he crawled warily forward, dragging himself along the ground a little further.

Lemaitre yelled, “Come on back! we’ve drawn their fire—that’s enough,” and Coco, with his heart thumping, was glad enough to return, running for all he was worth till he had reached his company. The men were fretful and restless with excitement, nervous, exclamatory. With a high, snoring drone, a German shell came driving through the air—a boom from the woods—then a sudden, terrifying crash as of thunder let loose as it burst in the rear. Coco turned to see a volcano of black smoke and earth behind him. “Lie down!” shouted the officers, and the men only too willingly dropped flat in the road. “At first,” said Coco, “the men lay looking up into the air trying to see the shells—imagining that they really could! But when the things dropped closer, they began to dodge—as if one could escape them that way!” More shells came, and more, buzzing through the air in a screeching crescendo, bursting with appalling smashes nearer and nearer the line. Then a whistle blew. Forward! All along the front men jumped up, ran ahead, dropped, then rose and ran further in a long, irregular skirmish line, toward that vicious wood. As they advanced, the cannonading burst into a double, triple fury, and the harsh barking of machine guns began—and never once stopped. A hundred yards from the trees the whistle blew again to halt, and then the din grew unbearable, a crashing thunder with shells bursting here, there, in front, behind, in continual explosion. Swept by that murderous tornado, they had to lie down and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait....

A scream of agony! Coco saw on his left a geyser of débris—clods of earth, stones, dust, and smoke, and two men thrown bodily upward. Another crash—nearer—he saw men’s heads and torn-off limbs flying past him. Coco himself, when he rose on one knee to fire (for he was emptying his rifle madly into the wood now), was thrown down again and again by the concussion of the air. He saw sudden upheavals appear—dirt, maimed bodies, rocks, knapsacks, rifles, thrown every way—and a hole would be left big enough for half a dozen men to take refuge in. Once he himself was buried up to his waist with flying dirt, his eyes were filled with dust and he could hardly breathe—the noxious fumes of the lyddite choked him. And always in his ears the incessant crash, bang, crash of the devastating, bursting shells till he couldn’t think. “Lie down! Lie down!” the officers shouted continually, but the men were now frenzied with the slaughter; they were on their knees, on their feet, shooting insanely into that secret, hellish wood, screaming curses.

And, all the time, where was the enemy? Nobody knew. Oh, if it had only come to a reckless charge against no matter what force, it would at least have been a chance for revenge; they would have gone forward like mad dogs. But instead, they had to wait—wait—wait to be killed! Coco saw his friends wounded one by one. Coco said: “Each man when he was hit would throw his arms up over his head—always, it was that same gesture—and then he would fall, bleeding.”

VII

The nerve-racking, deafening din went on and on without a respite. Bracques was hit in the head—he was a living, breathing horror, his whole jaw gone—one hand plucking at his coat. He lay grotesquely uncomfortable on his back, rolling this way and rolling that way on his knapsack and his tin gamelle and the dozen other accouterments he couldn’t get rid of. A dozen lads he had gone to school with in Toulouse were screaming. One called for his mother again and again, “Maman! Maman! Maman!” Most of the wounded lay still in their blood, or moaned and writhed in their agony. On Coco’s left, he said, was a body without a head. Coco, he confessed, thought more than once of running. What was the use of staying only to be butchered? They could do no good that way. But still the regiment held its place; yes, but the regiment was getting strangely thin. It could not last long.

Coco looked round for François, who should have been beside him. There he was, close by, grinning. He called out something to keep up Coco’s courage, but in that inferno Coco couldn’t hear a word. Then, instantly, there was a gigantic explosion; and when Coco rose again, he looked—he grew numb. There was François on his back—with both legs queerly bent in an impossible position. With a sickening wave of nausea Coco saw that both the boy’s legs were shockingly crushed, all but torn off, and his red pantaloons were soaking in blood. François’s face was horrible now; his eyes were shining wildly. Coco, shrinking with horror, managed to crawl toward him....

In the hospital at Toulouse, when Coco told me this, lying in his cot, he shrank convulsively into himself with horror, just as he must have recoiled, I fancy, that day. He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on the window. Coco told me then that François’s legs were torn “quite off”—he was sure of it; but I imagine that, in his agony of horror, Coco must have been mistaken, or François would have bled to death very quickly. Coco says he lived for nearly three-quarters of an hour. At any rate, his chum was done for, and suffering torments unspeakable.

“He just looked at me and begged me to kill him,” said Coco, his eyes still on the window. “He said”—Coco could hardly speak now—“he said if—I was his friend—I’d finish him—so he wouldn’t suffer. There was such a terrible noise of the shells bursting that I couldn’t quite hear at first— I had to hold my head close to get what he said.... He said—if he had helped me, ever—now was my chance to be his friend ... and put him out of his misery....”