"Fall in, confound you!…"
Finally, however, it becomes necessary for me to drop on two or three of the looters, whom I compel to throw down their gatherings at the foot of the tree they have robbed. One must occasionally adopt forcible expedients to preserve some semblance of order.
Marats-la-Grande. We do not pass through the village. Some mounted batteries are passing and scaling the sloping fields towards the road. The riders are shouting and whipping their horses, already straining at the collar. Poor beasts! So thin that one can count their ribs, sides chafed raw by the harness, heads hanging, they strain and strain until their laboured breathing is audible, while their large bleared eyes speak eloquently of their sufferings.
A grave; two posts have been tied to form a cross! On the horizontal one a deep notch has been made with a knife, revealing the white heart of the wood. Someone has written in pencil the name of the soldier whose body is lying in the earth, his uniform for his shroud. The number of his regiment, his company and the date of his death, the 9th of September, are also inscribed. Four days! Only four days ago that decomposing something lying beneath the mound of earth was a man in the full flood of life, hoping, perhaps, soon to be reunited to the dear ones waiting for him. Four days!… His parents would not have heard yet.
More graves. They are not laid out in any particular order, or even in groups. At irregular intervals, they line the road we are following, which is no more than a trampled-down track over fresh grass between trees in leaf. Everywhere one can see these sad little crosses, on almost all of which a red cap hangs. Without halting, the men read aloud the inscriptions. The 8th of September, the 9th of September, the 10th of September….
And here is one which is not marked with the little cross of branches. A stake has been simply driven into the ground, bearing a burnt-in inscription to tell passers-by the name of the dead man; on the newly-turned earth some white stones have been arranged in the form of a cross—they seem to protect him who lies there better and more intimately.
Hastily-made graves, turned out with small trenching tools, how I wish you were much deeper! Your lines suggest the shape of the body you hide from our eyes. The rain must have soaked you these last days and nights! But at least calm and peace are with you. The enemy is far away, never to return. Guard well, then, your poor dead, until the day dawns when the old men and women shall come to demand of you the bodies of their loved ones!
We march onwards a few minutes longer and reach a bare plain studded with shell-craters. The sun is sinking, the rays of its golden light striking obliquely. Mutilated horses are lying about, their stiff legs crossed or thrust up towards the sky. Their swollen sides betray the work of putrefaction within. A viscous fluid trickles from the corners of their mouths, which reveal their long yellow teeth; their bluish eyes have become filmy and liquid. They are a revolting, nauseating spectacle! I recognize the sickly, penetrating stench which always becomes more pronounced with the approach of night and is invariably associated with the corpses of big animals.
"Halt!" Before us is a line of trenches covered with straw. It is near here I fell on the morning of the 10th, and the men who picked me up sheltered me beneath a roof similar to this one. The atmosphere of human residence is still perceptible. Its occupants cannot have been gone long.
Rest, a prelude to settling down for the night. A final snack: the jams from Bar emerge from our knapsacks. The men are swarming over the plain. I watch a few of them dragging behind them some disreputable red eiderdowns which are shedding their feathers; others are carrying pieces of oilcloth picked up Heaven knows where; and some have become the proud possessors of dirty coverlets full of holes.