Only two remain standing and they rush towards me. The younger of them snatches at my hands covering them with tears and saliva. He utters a few incoherent words which reveal the tempest of fear obsessing him:
"I am not a Prussian; I am a Swabian. The Swabians have never done you any harm … the Swabians did not want this war…."
And his eyes glare into mine in a very frenzy of revolting supplication.
"I have given the French wounded, water. My comrades also: that is what we Swabians are!"
He talks and talks, and always the same monotonous refrain is repeated:
"Das machen die Schwaben. That is what the Swabians do."
Then, with ever mounting incoherence, he tells me other things; that he is an electrician, that he can walk fifty yards on his hands … he would have done it instantly too if I had but given the signal, possessed as he was by terrible fear, tortured by the thirst for life.
The other was passed from one man to another, palpitating and terror-stricken: we had not so far made any other prisoners! My men jeered at him like curious children. They listened with an air of wisdom to the conversation between myself and the German. Not ill-naturedly they amused themselves by causing him involuntarily to hunch his neck down between his shoulders when they placed a hand upon him. And each time, they laughed heartily and boyishly.
All this time the crackling of rifles disturbs the night's stillness; the short snappy reports emanating close at hand, the swift whistling of German bullets from the distance. Nor did the rain cease to fall, plastering our great-coats on to our backs, streaming in rivulets from the peaks of our caps. The wind, however, had ceased to moan. It blew gently now as though appeased, but cold and foxy. The day was approaching and never was the light of day so longed for. I saw once more the battlefield of Sommaisne, bathed in sunlight, clear in outline, rich in colour. And all that night we had been as blind men, fighting gropingly. I shrank from the thought of death in that icy mud, or in those puddles of water into which one stumbled….
How strange everything is. During a brief calm, music, strange, sharp, but rhythmic rings out. That must be the German bugles taking up their message and approaching nearer and nearer all along their lines. I turned to my Boche and asked: