Light

by Henri Barbusse

"I believe I saw some corpses," I said to him who marched in front of me; and there was a break in my voice.

"You've just left your village," he replied; "you bet there's some stiffs about here!"

I laughed also, in the delight of having got past. We began again to march one behind another, swaying about, hustled by the narrowness of this furrow they had scooped to the ancient depth of a grave, panting under the load, dragged towards the earth by the earth and pushed forward by will-power, under a sky shrilling with the dizzy flight of bullets, tiger-striped with red, and in some seconds saturated with light. At forks in the way we turned sometimes right and sometimes left, all touching each other, the whole huge body of the company fleeing blindly towards its bourne.

For the last time they halted us in the middle of the night. I was so weary that I propped my knees against the wet wall and remained kneeling for some blissful minutes.

My sentry turn began immediately, and the lieutenant posted me at a loophole. He made me put my face to the hole and explained to me that there was a wooded slope, right in front of us, of which the bottom was occupied by the enemy; and to the right of us, three hundred yards away, the Chauny road—"They're there." I had to watch the black hollow of the little wood, and at every star-shell the creamy expanse which divided our refuge from the distant hazy railing of the trees along the road. He told me what to do in case of alarm and left me quite alone.

Alone, I shivered. Fatigue had emptied my head and was weighing on my heart. Going close to the loophole, I opened my eyes wide through the enemy night, the fathomless, thinking night.

I thought I could see some of the dim shadows of the plain moving, and some in the chasm of the wood, and everywhere! Affected by terror and a sense of my huge responsibility, I could hardly stifle a cry of anguish. But they did not move. The fearful preparations of the shades vanished before my eyes and the stillness of lifeless things showed itself to me.

I had neither knapsack nor pouches, and I wrapped myself in my blanket. I remained at ease, encircled to the horizon by the machinery of war, surmounted by claps of living thunder. Very gently, my vigil relieved and calmed me. I remembered nothing more about myself. I applied myself to watching. I saw nothing, I knew nothing.

After two hours, the sound of the natural and complaisant steps of the sentry who came to relieve me brought me completely back to myself. I detached myself from the spot where I had seemed riveted and went to sleep in the "grotto."

The dug-out was very roomy, but so low that in one place one had to crawl on hands and knees to slip under its rough and mighty roof. It was full of heavy damp, and hot with men. Extended in my place on straw-dust, my neck propped by my knapsack, I closed my eyes in comfort. When I opened them, I saw a group of soldiers seated in a circle and eating from the same dish, their heads blotted out in the darkness of the low roof. Their feet, grouped round the dish, were shapeless, black, and trickling, like stone disinterred. They ate in common, without table things, no man using more than his hands.