We returned into reserve, carrying one of my corporals who was wounded in the groin by a bullet that had passed right through it. That was a difficult journey over the muddy roads! The wounded man groaned feebly, his arms passed around the necks of two of his comrades, his head swaying, his face livid. Once the men carrying him slipped and fell to their knees, and the agonized cry which broke from the sufferer echoed in my ears long after it had died to silence.
The night was like the preceding one; a silent, palpitating wait, the minutes as long drawn as hours; incessantly yearning for the dawn which never appeared. I grew gradually drowsy, and at length fell asleep in a heap on a comrade. He violently thrust me off, swearing savagely; I did my best to express my resentment. A little later, sudden anguish caused me to jump to my feet. I had upset the brazier, by this time almost extinct, and I had placed my hand on a few still glowing fragments of wood.
The rain continues to fall.
It is daylight now. We have just eaten a morsel or two of cold meat, wet and stale, as well as a few green potatoes found in one of the fields and partially cooked in patches beneath the cinders. We have been promised relief in the evening, but I am in such a condition now that I hope for nothing. Things have become very vague and ill-defined. I imagine that we must have been where we are at present for a very, very long time. We have been sent here; we have been commanded to remain here; and we have been forgotten. It is quite simple. No one will come. No one could come to replace us at the edge of this wood, in this ditch, beneath this rain. Never again shall we see snug houses with a bright fire in the grate, or well-built barns filled with hay which never gets wet. Never again shall we undress to stretch our cramped limbs and rid them of this terrible iciness. And what good would it be if we could? My clothes, stiff with mud, the puttees crushing my legs, my hardened boots, the straps of my equipment, have not all these things become part of me and of my sufferings? They are me! The water which first saturated my skin runs now in my very veins. What am I indeed but a muddied mass swamped with water, cold to the very heart, cold as the straw which covers us, cold as the trees on which each leaf rustles and shivers, cold as the very earth of the fields, which little by little is dissolving beneath the flooding rains?
Yesterday perhaps there was still time. Then we could have regained grip of ourselves, compelled our wills to resist. But to-day the evil has gone too far, has progressed beyond all hope of reparation. It is too late. It is not even worth the trouble of hoping for….
Sunday, September 20th.
"By the way, old man, when will you have finished with the whole of the blanket?"
Since we got into bed that is the third time Porchon has passed that same remark. I ignore him, most properly, striving hard to make my feigned snores sound regular and natural.
"Here, you blockhead, here! When the deuce will you stop bagging all the blanket?"
The beast persists! He is asking for it and gets it!