The captain, turning towards me, said:
"Go!"
So the time is come!
I experience a feeling only of pleasure. I am in the same strange mental condition as when under fire for the first time at Sommaisne. My legs move without volition; I march unthinkingly, conscious only of an all-pervading joy which elevates me above myself and permits me as it were to look upon myself as another being. In five minutes we reach the pine-wood which is our destination. We deploy before it, indeed almost within it. Without waiting a minute, the men set to work with their trenching tools. At the end of a couple of hours we possess a deep and narrow trench. Behind us to the left is Rembercourt; to the right front the tiny station of Vauxmarie.
The heat is enervating and unhealthy. A few clouds drift slowly past, increasing in size little by little and growing darker and more ominous, while the edges yet remain fringed with silver. From time to time puffs of wind bring to us a stench, sickly, penetrating, intolerable. It is as though we were in a charnel house.
All around us are bodies. One there is that is most horrible to look upon. Yet look upon it I must, despite my will. It is the body of a man lying near a shell hole; the head is detached from the trunk, and the blackened entrails protrude from a terrible wound in the abdomen. Near him lies a sergeant, the stock of his rifle still in his hands—the barrel and mechanism must have been blown far away. Another man lies with both legs parallel, yet the foot of one crosses the other; that leg must be shattered. And there are so many others! Our position compels us to look upon them, to breathe that fœtid air until nightfall.
And until nightfall I smoke and smoke in an attempt to stifle the soul-sickening miasma, that smell of the poor dead, lost on the field of battle, abandoned by their own who had not the time to throw even a few lumps of earth over them to hide them from the eyes of the living.
Throughout the day aeroplanes hovered over us. Shells fell also. But our captain had had a keen eye for a good place, and while a few explosions came perilously near, we suffered no casualties. At the worst it was a few shrapnel or other shells which burst far too high overhead to cause us concern.
For what reason are the aeroplanes remaining so long aloft up there? For more than two hours they have floated above us, describing great circles, drawing away only when our artillery became too pressing in its attentions, then returning until the black crosses on their wings were easily and plainly discernible. Towards evening they headed directly for the heavy black clouds accumulating on the horizon.
Into those sombre masses the sun sinks, dyeing them crimson at first, leaden as the light slowly fades. The finish of the day is ominous and depressing. The darkness of night settles down almost tangibly, while the stench of the dead bodies rises and spreads.