Where on earth are they going? Two of them who were just strolling between the pyramids of rifles have suddenly disappeared as though they had dived from the camp. There must be a steep slope there with some farm, or perhaps a village, at the bottom of it. Looters have noses like bloodhounds for inhabited spots, and start at once in pursuit. There is no cure for that disease. I study my map to find that we are just above Erize-la-Grande. Its road and houses cannot be a hundred yards from where I am. I dispatch a non-com. in pursuit of the men, with orders to bring them back at once.
I leave the wet trench to walk a little in the open air before the fall of night. A few cyclists go by, rather more elegant than ourselves, in their short coats, knee-breeches and their puttees. Swinging from their belts are Boche flasks covered with a cloth coloured similarly to the uniforms we have so often seen. I regret my own lost flask and envy the cyclists. I have recognized the man of the 5th to whom I entrusted it, but that does not carry me much further, although I have made a mental note of him for a future occasion.
"Fall in!"
New orders have just arrived and we are to move on again.
Before leaving, I pick up a fragment of shell over which I stumbled. It is fifty centimetres long by fifteen wide, with jagged edges like the teeth of a saw. I contemplate this terrible thing lying heavy in my hand. To what kind of a shell, swift and growling, must it have belonged? This fragment must be one of those which cleanly sweep away an arm or leg, tear off a head, or cut a man completely in two. And holding it thus in my hand, heavy and cold, I remember a poor little cyclist who was killed close to us in Septsarges Wood—one leg taken away at the hip and the lower part of his abdomen laid open.
Trees and a shimmer of green on a wide road, away to the north. Night is falling. Suddenly through the greyness we find ourselves looking upon some ruins—we have reached Erize-la-Petite.
The entrance to the village, which is indeed little more than a hamlet, was choked with carriages, with ploughs and horse-rakes, which had been drawn to one side. In silence we pass before the shattered houses. Nothing remains but the mere shells of walls and distorted chimneys still standing above the wrecked hearths. Some charred beams have rolled almost into the middle of the roadway; a large mechanical mowing-machine raises its broken shaft like a stump.
The regiment defiles through the gloomy evening; our steps resound lugubriously and violate the surrounding desolation. In a short while, when the last section will have disappeared over the summit of the hill, the cold and silent night will descend again on the village, and peace shroud the poor, dead houses.
For the last time I turn and look back, glutting my eyes with this vision of desolation. Then I resume mechanically the onward march, sad to the point of tears, with the wan chillness of death in my heart.
Another road skirting the line which links Rembercourt with Vauxmarie and Beauzée. In the ditches, hunched up or stretched at full length, are human corpses. A single corpse is a rare spectacle. As a rule they are lying huddled together as if seeking to warm each other. The failing light reveals blue coats and red trousers; Frenchmen; more Frenchmen, in fact nothing but Frenchmen! Judge my enthusiasm on finding some Boches among them! I fall out several times to make sure that these really are Boches. The foe cannot have had the time to hide away that lot!