Suddenly one of the horses of my ammunition wagon foundered and refused to go any farther, stopping the whole team. He had to be unharnessed and abandoned. The other carriages had passed us, and with our five remaining horses we galloped across country in order to rejoin the column. The furrows nearly shook us off our seats and we had to hold on to the box-rails with might and main, bracing our legs against the foot-rests in order not to fall off.
We overtook the battery in a village which had been visible from afar on the flat and bare countryside. The enemy had evidently quartered there. The doors had been broken in with blows from the butt-ends of rifles; almost all the windows had been smashed, and were now mere frames bristling with jagged splinters of glass. Dirty curtains flapped through them on the outside. Torn-down shutters lay strewn on the pavement among broken bottles, shattered tiles, and empty tins of preserves. Others, hanging by one hinge, beat against the fronts of the houses.
Through the wide-open doors we could see staved-in wardrobes which had been thrown down the staircases. Empty drawers, mantelpiece ornaments, photographs, pictures and prints littered the red-tiled floors. Mud-stained sheets with the mark of hobnailed boots on them trailed to the middle of the street, giving to these unfortunate houses something of the horror of ripped-up corpses.
The pavements were a mass of furniture thrown out of the windows, perambulators, go-carts, and broken wine-casks. Wood crunched under the wheels of the wagon. A pair of pink corsets was lying in the gutter.
On one of the Michelin danger signals, at the other end of the village, I read the warning: "Attention aux enfants—Sennevières," and on the other side a derisive and mournful "Merci."[1]
We halted where the road traced a straight white line through a plain covered with mangel-wurzels. The desolate nakedness of the fields was only broken by a shed, three hayricks, and, farther off, some little, square-shaped copses and a long line of poplars. To the east and north the battle growled, whistled and roared like a storm at sea. One would have thought that the infernal noise came from some deep, subterranean earthquake.
We had waited a few minutes when suddenly the countryside sprang to life. Battalions, debouching from Sennevières, deployed in skirmishing order, and other soldiers—hundreds and thousands whose presence one would never have suspected—rose up from the bosom of the earth and swarmed like ants over the fields, their breeches making red patches on the sombre green of the grass. Frightened hares fled from before the oncoming lines.
Small groups of wounded again began to go by. They could be seen far off, black specks on the straight white road dazzling in the sun.
Some Cuirassiers appeared to be billeted somewhere in the surroundings. One or two passed by on foot, without helmets or breast-plates, their chests covered with buff-coloured felt pads fitted with wadded rings round the armholes. They were carrying large joints of fresh beef. In the shade of three poplars to the right of the road, just outside the village, some men were slaughtering cattle and selling the meat. Near-by lay a dead horse.