The sun has left the rim of the earth and is speedily mounting the horizon. The morning is of an exquisite softness that contrasts strangely with the tragic scene. Behind me is chaos, in front a charnel-heap. Yet up above a lark is singing. His wings flap and his claws quiver, but he does not change his place in the rose-tinted heavens. I watch this sweet songster fluttering overhead, as if it were pecking at the light. A look-out man raises his eyes to catch sight of it. He looks at it tenderly for a moment, then resumes his watching. The passing shells do not disturb it in the slightest.
What is happening down there, among the corpses in green uniforms? One of them has made a movement; he glides through the grass like a snake. The enemy uses his dead as a screen or a blind, and is coming in this way to spy out the land. A look-out man has also observed this uncanny resurrection. He fires. Nothing moves. We must have been mistaken. A long time afterwards, a little below the suspected point, a body jumps up and abruptly disappears at a spot where the gradient is very steep and forms dead ground.
As in the mountains, I sweep the horizon with my gaze and give names to the valleys and hills. Douaumont, on my right, is the loftiest summit (1200 feet); only Souville, at the back, makes any approach to this. It seems like some incubus weighing upon the whole surrounding country. I am separated from it by the wooded slopes of Vaux-Chapître, by the ravine of Le Bazil, whose existence I guess at, and by the rising wood of La Caillette. Above the Woevre, Hardaumont rears its head like a cliff. The Woevre stretches out as far as the eye can see, broken up with undergrowth and villages and streaked with roads. In broad daylight I get a better idea of its bareness, which was veiled by the kindly dawn. Its untilled soil resembles a vast marsh. On the right my eyes rest on the dark blur of Herméville Wood. The outlying spurs of the Meuse Heights hide a portion of it from view.
It is there, towards the village, over against those hillsides, over against Damloup, that the enemy’s onslaught was shattered. And the fort, on its plateau, with its superstructure half crushed, with breaches in its double wall, seems like the formidable hulk of an ironclad which still floats upon the waters, not yet abandoned by its crew. The storm thought to overwhelm it, and it has vanquished the storm.
We stayed very late, in order to see everything, in accordance with our instructions. Nine o’clock in the morning; the sun is already high in the heavens. The sky is clear, the day is a good one for observations, and the Boche balloons are watching us. The crossing of the ridge threatens to be difficult.
As a matter of fact, it is difficult to go out at all. We are at once encircled. Life hangs by a thread. The corpses, now indiscreet, display ghastly wounds. Only a few are intact; it is hard to find the broken statues I saw in the moonlight. And the realization of death, in the revolt of one’s whole being, is invested with a special horror—that of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but a nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. Then, too, there is the thought of remaining unburied.
This idea did not come spontaneously. We walked across two corpses: a little soldier, very young, quite beardless, no doubt of the 1915 class, covered with a little earth, two or three shovelfuls which did not suffice to hide him; and, quite near him, a stretcher-bearer, identified by his Red Cross armlet, his head split open, still clasping a spade in his hand. The stretcher-bearer was killed while trying to carry out his pious duty of interment. Here the stricken must be left uncared for. We must let Death bury the dead.
There is a legend which says that the souls of those who have not been laid in consecrated ground wander in space without ever finding rest. But the soil of our invaded country is consecrated ground. May those who have fallen there in defending it rest in peace! For the appeal of the Church, Memento quia pulvis es—“Remember, because thou art dust”—which accompanies the placing of the ashes on the brows of the faithful—could I ever have thought out a more eloquent paraphrase?
A last rationing party meets us. It has not been able to reach its goal during the night. By day it is not usual to go to the fort.
“Are you going as far as the fort?”