There was nothing to do under the shrapnel-fire. The Captain surveyed the plain with exasperating calmness.
Presently the enemy increased his range, and the shells passed overhead and burst in the valley, on a road where we could see first lines of wagons making off at a gallop in thick clouds of dust.
Orders arrived.... We were to return to Landres.
A deep hole had been made in the road by a shell, and near-by lay the hashed remains of a horse—a limbless, decapitated body. The head, lying on the edge of the ditch, and apparently intact, seemed to be looking at this body with a surprised expression in its big, still unclouded eyes. A shred of flesh and chestnut skin had been blown to the top of a neighbouring slope. The shell crater, in which lay the intestines surrounded with purple blood rapidly blackening in the sun, exhaled a smell of decay and excrement—a sickening odour which nearly made us ill.
It seemed that the senior N.C.O. who had been riding this horse had escaped without a scratch.
A regiment of Chasseurs was slowly descending the high hill overlooking Landres on the north-east.
The setting sun no longer lit up the depths of the valley where we had parked our guns, but, by contrast, illuminated the more magnificently the steep incline down which the red and blue squadrons were descending in good order, their drawn sabres glinting in the gorgeous orange-coloured light. The Chasseurs passed close by us, and then rode up the opposite side of the valley towards the sun, whose red disk still peeped over the hilltop. As they crossed the summit the horsemen were silhouetted for a moment against the horizon.
I was tired out, and in spite of my efforts began to fall asleep. I had the impression that in order to keep awake I should have to adopt the attitude of the sentries of old—one finger raised, commanding silence.
Wednesday, September 2