“And what’s the matter with you?” I said to him.
“Oh, I think I have lost my feet; but I am fairly strong and my body is solid.”...
It was true! I saw that both his feet had been torn away.
Round the electric arcs, luminous rings were formed by the sickening vapour. On the sides of the tent, in the folds, you could see the flies sleeping in big black patches, overcome by the cold freshness of night.
Large waves rolled on the canvas, passing like a shudder or violently flapping, according as the wind or gunfire was the cause.
I stepped carefully over some stretchers and found myself outside, in a night that roared, illuminated by the aurora borealis of the battlefield.
I had walked, with my hands held out in front of me, until I came upon a fence. Suddenly I knew what it was to be leaning against the parapet of hell!
What a human tempest! What explosions of hatred and destruction! You would have said that a company of giants were forging the horizon of the earth with repeated blows that filled the air with countless sparks. Innumerable furtive lights gave one continuous great light that lived, throbbed and danced, dazzling the sky and the land. Jets of iridescent light were bursting in the open sky as if they fell from the blows of the steam-hammer on white-hot steel. To me who had only recently left the trenches, each of these firework displays meant something—advice, commands, desperate calls, signals for slaughter; and I interpreted this furnace as if it had expressed in words the fury and distress of the combatants.
Towards Combles, on the left of Maurepas, one section above all seemed to be raging. It was just there that the junction was made between the English and the French armies; and it was there that the enemy concentrated a tumultuous and never-slackening fire. Every night, during many weeks, I saw this place lighted up with the same devouring flame. It was at each instant so intense that every instant appeared to be the decisive one. But hours, nights and months went slowly by in the eternity of time, and each of these terrible moments was only one intense outburst out of an infinity of them. Thus often the agony of wounds is such that you would hardly think it could be endured any longer. But death comes not willingly at the desire of men: it strikes at will, when it likes, where it likes, and hardly permits itself to be directed or coaxed.
Morning came. Those who have seen the daybreaks of the war, after nights spent in fighting, or in the bloody work of the ambulance, will understand what is the most ugly and mournful thing in the world.