Resignation indeed is difficult of attainment when one knows, as we do, the increase of our sufferings the rain involves: the heavy clothes; the coldness which penetrates with the water; the hardened leather of our boots; trousers flapping against the legs and hindering each stride; the linen at the bottom of the knapsack—that precious linen, the feel of which against one's skin is a sheer delight—hopelessly stained, transformed little by little into a sodden mass on which papers and bottles of pickles have left their stain; the mud that spurts into one's face and covers one's hands; the confused arrival; the night all too short for sleep passed beneath a coat that freezes instead of warming; the whole body stiff, joints without suppleness, painful; and the departure with boots of wood which crush the feet like the torture-shoe. Hard, indeed, is resignation!
As yesterday we march between two lines of French corpses. They seem to be dressed in new clothes, so much rain has fallen on them. It is perhaps a week since they fell. Their flesh, swollen by decomposition, has attained enormous dimensions; they have legs and arms of tremendous size, yet curiously short, and their clothes are stretched to bursting over their inflated bodies. Men of line regiments, then Colonials. The dead we passed previously were lying face downward; these have been raised and propped against the slope facing the road, as though to watch us pass. Their faces are blackened, their lips large and swollen. Many of our men, taking them to be negroes, exclaim: "Hullo! These are Turcos."
I have a particularly vivid recollection of one of those poor dead by the roadside. He was a captain of the Colonials. They had made him kneel on the grass by forcibly bending his legs beneath him; one of his legs had gradually bent back and was stretched out in front of him, giving one the impression that the man was about to throw himself forward, as if in some erratic dance. His body was turned sideways, but his head craned rigidly forward, and his eyes were fixed on the road in a vacant stare. But what struck me most was his moustache, light and curly and altogether charming. Beneath it the mouth was no more than two purple pads of flesh. That fair ladies'-love moustache on a putrefying face was a heartrending spectacle.
Come! Head erect and fists clenched! No more of that weakness that a moment ago assailed me. We must look unmoved on these poor dead and seek from them the inspiration of hate. It was the Boche in his flight who dragged these sorry things to the side of the road, who arranged this horrid spectacle for our express benefit, and we must never rest until the brute has drunk our cup of vengeance to the dregs.
Impotent and childish is the fury that only inspires us with rage and the passion for vengeance instead of fear, as our foe hopes and believes.
Besides, every step forward now presents us with eloquent testimony of the completeness of the defeat they have suffered—helmets torn and pierced by our bullets, crushed and shattered by our shells; rusty bayonets; broken cartridge-belts, still full. To the left of the road in the fields are some overturned ammunition wagons and gun-carriages in pieces, the horses lying dead in a heap. In the ditch is the carriage of a shattered machine-gun; one can see the hole made by the shell—a 75. What a state the gun on that carriage must have been in! And the machine-gunners? At the bottom of the hole! Ammunition belts of coarse white canvas lie coiled in puddles.
We pick up some boots full of rain-water. I wonder whether the men from whom we took them walked barefooted through the mud merely for pleasure? In another hole we find the men themselves. Further on again we encounter crosses bearing German inscriptions. Here then are the Ottos, the Friedrichs, the Karls, and the Hermans! Each cross bears four, five and even six names. The Germans were in a hurry; they buried their men in bunches.
A cross higher than the others attracts and holds our attention; it bears no more than three words deeply carved in big capitals:
ZWEI DEUTSCHE KRIEGER.
Is there still another challenge hidden behind this? If so, it is obscure. For who killed you, you two German soldiers?