At daybreak my company was sent to do main guard duty. We met mobilized soldiers, dispirited franc-tireurs who were dragging their feet piteously. A little further away, the general, accompanied by his staff, was watching the manoeuvres of the artillery. He held a map of the general staff, unfolded on the neck of his horse, and was vainly trying to locate the Saussaie mill. Bending over the map which the horse shifted out of place with every movement of its head, he shouted:
"Where is that damned mill?... Pontgouin.... Couville.... Courville.... Do they think I know all their damned mills around here?"
The general commanded us to halt and asked:
"Is there anyone here who is familiar with this country?... Is there anyone here who knows where the Saussaie mill is?"
Nobody answered.
"No?... Well alright. To hell with it!"
And he threw the map to his aide who began folding it up carefully. We resumed our march.
The company was stationed on a farm and I was put on guard duty near the road, at the entrance to a grove, beyond which I could look on an open plain, immense and smooth like the sea. Here and there small woods emerged from the ocean of land like islands; the belfries of the villages, the farms, blurred by the fog, assumed the aspect of a distant veil. In this enormous expanse a great silence reigned, a solitude wherein the least noise, the least thing stirring in the skies, had something mysterious about it which put anguish into one's heart. Up above, black dots spotted the skies—those were the ravens; down below, upon the earth, small black specks moved forward, growing larger, disappearing—those were the fleeing soldiers of the reserves; and now and then the distant barking of dogs, answered by similar barking all along the line from east to west, from north to south, sounded like the plaint of the deserted fields. Our guard was supposed to be relieved every four hours, but hours upon hours passed, slow and endless, and no one came to take my place.
No doubt they had forgotten all about me. With a heavy heart I was searching the horizon on the Prussian side, the French side; I saw nothing, nothing but this hard, relentless line, which encircled the huge grey sky around me. It was a long time since the ravens had ceased flying and the reserve soldiers fleeing. For a moment I saw a truck coming toward the woods where I was, but it turned off on one of the roads and soon was no longer distinguishable from the grey terrain.... Why did they leave me thus?... I was hungry and I was cold, my bowels rumbled, my fingers became numb. I ventured out on the road a little; having walked a few steps I shouted.... Not a being answered my call, not a thing stirred.... I was alone, utterly alone, alone in this deserted, empty field.... A shudder passed through my frame, and tears came into my eyes.... I shouted again.... No answer.... Then I went back into the woods and sat down at the foot of an oak tree, with my rifle across my lap, keeping a sharp lookout and waiting.... Alas! The day was waning little by little, the sky grew yellow, then purple by degrees and finally vanished in deadly silence. And night, moonless and starless, fell upon the fields, and at the same time a chilling fog arose from the shadows.
Worn out with fatigue, always occupied with something or other and never alone, I had no time to reflect on anything from the moment we started out. But still confronted by the strange and cruel sights constantly before my eyes, I felt within me the awakening of the idea of human life which until now had lain slumbering in the sluggishness of my childhood and the torpor of my youth. Yes ... the idea awoke confusedly, as if emerging from a long and painful nightmare. And reality appeared to me more frightful than the nightmare. Transposing the instincts, the desires and passions which agitated us from the small group of errant men that we were to society as a whole, recalling the impressions so fleeting and wholly external which I had received in Paris, the rude crowds, the pushing and jostling of pedestrians, I understood that the law of the world was strife; an inexorable, murderous law, which was not content with arming nation against nation but which hurled against one another the children of the same race, the same family, the same womb. I found none of the lofty abstractions of honor, justice, charity, patriotism of which our standard books are so full, on which we are brought up, with which we are lulled to sleep, through which they hypnotize us in order the better to deceive the kind little folk, to enslave them the more easily, to butcher them the more foully.