"Do you know where the Staff of the —— Corps is?" I asked.
The man shrugged his shoulders to show that he didn't, and that he didn't care. What did it matter to him? His job was to get the goods loaded, forget nothing, and then to go to his appointed post where he would have to wait for further orders to unload his stuff in the evening. He had enough to do. What did anything else matter to him? However, he pointed in a vague manner: "They went over there...."
Off I started again over the wide undulating plain. The noise of the cannonade became louder and louder, and I now perceived traces of the work of death. At a turning of the road there were a couple of dead horses that had been dragged into the ditch. I cannot say how painful the sight was to me. Apparently a dead horse at the seat of war is a trifle, and no doubt I should very soon see it with indifference. But these were the first I had seen, and I could not help casting a glance of pity at them. Poor beasts! A month before they had been showing off their fine points in the well-kept stables of the artillery barracks. When I saw them their stiffened corpses bore traces of all their sufferings. Their harness had rubbed great sores in their flesh, in more places than one. Their glazed eyes seemed to be still appealing for pity. They had fallen down exhausted, finding it impossible to keep up with their fellows. They had been quickly unharnessed, so as not to block up the road; had been dragged on to the sunburnt grass, and it was there no doubt the death-agony that had already lasted for some hours had come to an end.
We went on, and, in the distance, here and there on the plain, which now stretched before us for miles, we saw more of them. I wondered how it was that so many horses had fallen in so short a time. It was not a month since mobilisation had been ordered, and hardly ten days since operations had begun. What a huge effort then the army must already have made!
But I soon forgot the poor beasts, for we were nearing the scene of the struggle. Behind the shelter of every swell in the ground were ammunition waggons. I went up to one of these and was astonished at what I saw. The limbers, which are always so smart in the barrack-yard, with their grey paint, were covered with a thick coating of dust or of hardened mud. The horses, dirty and thin, seemed ready to drop. Their necks were covered with sores, and they were hanging their heads to eat, but seemed not to have strength enough to take their food. Drivers and non-commissioned officers were sprawling about, sleeping heavily. Their cadaverous faces, beards of a week's growth and drawn features showed even in their sleep how exhausted they were. I could hardly recognise the original colour of their dingy uniforms under the accumulation of stains and dust.
It was now eight o'clock in the morning. The sunshine was beating hot upon the sleepers, but they seemed indifferent to this. They had simply pulled the peaks of their caps over their eyes and were snoring away, with their noses in the air and their mouths open. Beasts and men together formed a group of creatures that seemed utterly depressed and worn out. I could never have believed it possible to sleep under such conditions, with the guns booming unceasingly in all directions.
I went up the nearest ridge and thence got a glimpse of a corner of the battle. I had expected to see a sight similar to that which had delighted us at man[oe]uvres; troops massed in all the depressions of the ground, battalions advancing in good order along the roads, and mounted men galloping about on the higher ground. But there was nothing of the sort.
In front of me, about 600 yards off, and under cover of the brow of a hill carpeted with russet stubble, I saw two batteries of artillery, firing their guns. I looked intently. The pieces were in perfect line and the gunners at their posts. The shots were fired at regular intervals and with cool deliberation. The gunners took their time, and seemed to be working very casually. I had expected to see them fairly excited: the men running under a hail of shells, teams brought up at a gallop as soon as a few salvoes had been fired, and the guns whirled off at full speed and lined up in battery again some hundreds of yards further off.
On the contrary, these guns seemed to be planted there for good. The limbers, which were massed to the rear under cover of a slope, looked very much like the sections of munitions I had seen just before. The men were sleeping in the shadows of their horses, and the horses were asleep on their feet in their appointed places. The only man standing was a stout-looking adjutant who was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets. With his eyes on the ground he seemed to be counting his steps. And meanwhile, the two batteries went on firing salvoes of four at a time. When one was finished there was a pause of two or three minutes. Then the other battery took it up.
But Wattrelot interrupted my reverie: "Look over there, sir.... Ça barde!" I looked in the direction he was pointing out. And now I no longer felt the uneasy feeling that had come over me at the sight of what was going on here. Above a height that overtopped the hill on which I was, and about 1,500 yards away, the German shells were bursting incessantly. We could distinctly hear the sharp sound of the explosions. In the clear blue of the sky they made little white puffs which vanished gradually and were replaced by others. Their gunners could not have been firing with the same coolness as ours, for the white puffs increased in number. The noise they were making on the spot must have been deafening. From where I was we heard the explosions following one upon another without intermission.