They form an endless procession, dragging one leg after the other, their faces feverish, their hair long and their beards dirty.
And here are still more wagons packed with women and children, or with wounded men, some of whom sit gripping the sides with both hands, while others lie stretched full length on blood-stained straw. Ammunition wagons go by at a gallop, creating a terrible rattle; groups of dusty infantry tramp over the withered grass by the roadside.
And so the torrent, descending from the top of the hill over which the road vanishes into the distance, streams on towards the bottom of the valley where the village lies. Does it mean a panic, this? I ask myself. Certainly not! But if not, then why this feeling of depression, of which, do what I will, I cannot rid myself?
A Staff-officer has arrived. Our detachment commander turns pale with emotion merely at the sight of his badges. It quickly transpires that we are to turn back across the Meuse the way we came. I learn the news without surprise; I was certain that that stream of stragglers boded ill for us.
A long march lies before us, over a monotonous road destitute of trees. The sky is gloomy, obscured by rain clouds. Moreover the atmosphere is oppressive. We revisit Bras and Charny, then Marre and Chattancourt: which villages all resemble each other, with their low-built houses—presenting a colour-scheme of washed-out blue and dirty yellow. And always, at the very thresholds of the cottages, is the inevitable pile of manure, spreading every now and again right into the middle of the roadway.
Esnes is like Marre and Chattancourt. We are billeted there with a young woman who has the face of a toothless doll and legs without calves. In a dark corner of the room, I catch a glimpse of some strange person, fondling a child still in swaddling clothes. Like a shadow he vanishes as we enter.
From the open door I watch a soldier in shirt-sleeves, forearms bare, slaughtering a sheep lying with its legs tied to a gate. Each agonized convulsion of the poor beast makes me feel ill; it brings back to my mind the time when, in a slaughter-house, I plunged my leg into a bucket filled with warm blood, streaming in a flood from the severed neck of a slaughtered cow!…
The evening set in grey and depressing. Fine rain began to fall, saturating everything. I thought of my men trying to rest out in the fields, lying round their piled arms, and set out to see if I could find shelter for them.
It did not prove difficult, for there was scarcely a soldier in the whole village. I found a barn full of hay, and returned to the meadow well pleased with myself:
"Up, boys! Bring your arms, packs, and the whole bag of tricks! There is a roof with good hay beneath it for you over there!"