Those were my thoughts as I entered upon my new duties. We were walking along the plateau, which stood out before heaven, erect as an altar, piled with millions of creatures ready for the sacrifice.
It had been dry for several days, and we lived under the rule of King Dust. The dust is the price we pay for fine weather: it attacks the fighting pack, intrudes upon its work, its food and its thoughts; it makes your lips filthy, your teeth crunch, and your eyes inflamed. But when it disappears the reign of mud begins, and then we passionately desire to stagnate again in the dust.
Far away, like idly moving rivers, large columns of dust marked all the roads in the district, and were filtered by the wind as they flowed over the countryside. The light of day was polluted with it, as the sky was ravaged by great flights of aeroplanes, and the silence violated and degraded, and the earth with its vegetation torn and mutilated.
I was not that day by any means disposed to be happy, but all this plunged me into the deepest gloom.
Looking all around me I found the only places where I could rest my eyes were in the innocent looks of the horses or on some unfortunate timid men who worked on the roadside. Everything else was nothing but a bristling gesture of war.
Night had fallen when we arrived at the city of tents. The Adjutant took me to a tent and found me a place on some straw which was strongly reminiscent of the pigsty. I took off my knapsack, lay down and fell asleep.
I got up with the dawn and, wandering through the mist, tried to find my bearings.
There was the road leading from Albert—worn, hollowed, and terribly overrun. It bore the never-ending stream of wounded. Alongside of it stood the city of tents, with its streets, its suburbs, and its public squares. Behind the tents, a cemetery. That was all.
I was leaning on a fence and I looked at the cemetery. Though it was overflowing, its appetite was insatiable. A group of German prisoners were occupied in digging long dark pits that were like so many open and expectant mouths. Two officers went by: one was fat, and looked as if at any moment he would be struck with apoplexy. He was gesticulating wildly to the other. “We have,” he said, “got ready in advance 200 graves and almost as many coffins. No, you can’t say that this offensive has not been planned.”