Then comes the end of endurance and patience:
"It is no longer worth while even to trouble oneself by hoping!"
Heart-rending scenes these, are they not? Is it imperative that they should be discounted? It is conceivable they may upset, even disgust, the reader; but because they cause us pain we must not shrink from them, for it is precisely through the medium of that pain that we enter into intimate contact and communion with our soldiers; in compelling ourselves to contemplate these realities, however unpalatable they may be, we learn to accord our soldiers that recognition, that admiration, that pity which is their due!
Equally candid are his observations on the morale of the combatants. There are moments when they are demoralized, when they are afraid, yes, afraid! During a bombardment, for example:
"With bodies hunched together, heads hidden beneath knapsacks, muscles strained and contorted, agonizedly awaiting the nerve-shattering shock of the explosions."
One day the regiment just about to enter the firing-line encounters a column of wounded making for the clearing stations—a long column which seems unending, and:
"It is as if, in merely showing themselves, with their wounds and their bloodstains, with their appearance of exhaustion and their masques of suffering, they had said to our men: See! It is a battle that is being waged! See what it has brought us…. Don't go on! And the men who were going forward looked upon them with faces anxious and troubled with dread, with eyes wide and fevered, in the grip of a moral tempest."
Is it necessary to record these weaknesses? It is, because they represent nothing but the truth, and it is natural that the "living flesh should shrink," willing not to die. When Henry IV. was on the point of charging in battle his emotions so overcame him that he was compelled to dismount from his horse. But for a moment only. And then he charged! The enemy found it incredible that this man who hurled himself into the fight as recklessly as any mere carabineer could conceivably be the king of France himself. And Turenne, trembling in the face of peril, reprimanded his body, saying: "Thou tremblest, carcass!" After which he forced himself to go where he least wished to go. And so is it with our soldiers:
"They are marching; each step they take brings them nearer that zone where Death reigns to-day, and still they march onwards. They go to enter that region of death, each with his living body; that body which, in the clutch of terror, performs involuntarily the motions of men fighting, eyes straight levelled, finger resting on rifle trigger; and that must continue as long as may be necessary notwithstanding the whistling bullets flying by unceasingly, bullets which often times embed themselves with a horrible, dread little noise, which makes one swiftly turn one's head as though to say: 'Hallo! Look!' And looking, they see a comrade crumple up and say to themselves: 'Soon perhaps it will be I; maybe in an hour or in a minute or even in this passing second, it will be my turn.' Then fear makes its kingdom of the living flesh. They are afraid; unquestionably they fear. But being afraid, they remain at their posts. And they fight the flesh, compel their bodies to obedience, because that is as it should be, and because, indeed, they are men!"
Such is the truth, the reality, which truth and reality, far from depressing me, gives me strength. I see the soldier as he is, I know him as he is, I love and admire him with complete confidence!