In the French army a number of soldiers from each company are detailed to recognize and bury the dead. As far as possible soldiers of the same corps must pick up their fellow-members. They write down the number stamped on the clothing of the dead. Then, aided in this painful duty by paid Lombardy peasants, they put the corpses in a common grave. Unfortunately, it is possible that, because of the unavoidable rapidity in this labor, and because of the carelessness and inattention of the paid workmen, more than one living man is buried with the dead.
The letters, papers, orders, money, watches found on the officers are sent to their families, but the great number of the interred bodies make the faithful accomplishment of this task impossible.
A son, the idol of his parents, educated and cared for during many years by a loving mother who was uneasy at the very slightest indisposition. A brilliant officer, beloved by his family, having left at home his wife and children. A young soldier who has just left his betrothed and his mother, sisters and old father; there he lies in the mud and in the dust, soaked in his own blood. Because of the wound in his head his face has become unrecognizable. He is in agony, he expires in cruel suffering, and his body, black, swollen, hideous, thrown in a shallow grave, is covered with a little lime and earth. The birds of prey will not respect his feet and hands protruding from the muddy ground of the slope which serves him as a tomb. Someone will come back, will carry more earth there and, perhaps, will put up a wooden cross above the place where his body rests, and that will be all.
The corpses of the Austrians, clothed in mud-stained cloaks, torn linen jackets, white tunics stained with blood are strewn by thousands on the hills and plains of Medole. Clouds of crows fly over the bodies in hopes of having them for prey.
By hundreds they are crowded into a great common grave.
Once out of the line of fire, Austrian soldiers, slightly wounded, young first-year recruits, throw themselves on the ground from fatigue and inanition, then weakened by loss of blood, they die miserably from exhaustion and hunger.
Unhappy mothers in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, your sorrow will be great when you learn that your children died in the enemy's country, without care, without help, and without consolation!
The lot of the Austrian prisoners-of-war is very sad. Led like simple cattle, they are sent in a crowd, with a strong guard, to Brescia, where they at last find repose, if not a kind welcome.
Some French soldiers wish to do violence to the Hungarian captives whom they take for Croates, adding furiously that those "Glued-pantalooners," as they called them, always killed the wounded. I succeeded in tearing from their hands these unfortunate, trembling captives.
On the battle-field many Austrians are permitted to keep their swords. They have the same food as the French officers. Some troops of the allied army fraternally divide their biscuits with the famished prisoners. Some even take the wounded on their backs and carry them to the ambulances. Near me the lieutenant of the guard bandages with his white handkerchief the head of a Tyrolese which was scarcely covered with old, torn, and dirty linen.