"Now are you ever going to shut up, you ——! If you don't, I'll go and fetch the Major!"
A broadside of oaths rose from the straw. The gunners replied. Dozing men, waking up, yelled:
"Shut your mouths! Shut 'em, do you hear?"
Friday, September 18
Day was just breaking as we moved slowly along the roads across the plain, our horses sinking up to the fetlocks in clayey mud.
We met large parties of wounded—Tirailleurs, Zouaves, and, above all, soldiers of the line. They overflowed the road on either side as they plodded on with heavy steps which dragged in the gutters and puddles.
The dawn was misty. It was half-past four, but we could not see the faces of the wounded until they were actually passing our carriage, when we had a vision of white bandages and of others crimson-red. But when the troops had gone by in the vague, uncertain light, we could only perceive a slowly rolling sea of heads and shoulders.
In the eyes of some of my comrades who yesterday were so close to death and who to-day were still stiff, tired, and dejected, I caught sight of looks of envy. They were aware of the orders which had arrived during the night, namely, that we were to return to our positions of yesterday.
They were not afraid, but the familiarity with danger, which had made them brave, had in no sense impaired their love of life—the life which they felt bubbling in their veins and which, in a few moments perhaps, might be spent, with all their red blood, on the field of mangel-wurzels. They were thinking of those who had died yesterday, of Corporal Gratien, of Captain Legoff—an officer adored by his men—of the six numbers of the 6th Battery who were reduced to a shapeless, bleeding pulp at the bottom of their trench.
It is at moments like these, at once melancholy and solemn, when the regular creaking and jolting of the wagons and the measured hoof-beats of the horses numb the senses and make one drowsy, that one's thoughts turn most bitterly to the future of bygone dreams, to all promised joys and pleasures, to all the happiness for which the past has paved the way and which might possibly have been realized without difficulty....