“I get some relief by chewing the candles, but I dare not eat them all. I am afraid of the dark, I am afraid of the rats, but worst of all is the hideous fear of myself.
“My mind is breaking down. I must escape soon, or I will be little better than a wild animal. Oh, God, send help! I am going mad!”
“Terror, desperation, despair—is this the end?”
“FOR a long time I have been resting.
“I have had a brilliant idea. Rest brings back strength. The longer a person rests the stronger they should get. I have been resting a long time now. Weeks or months, I don’t know which. So I must be very strong. I feel strong. My fever has left me. So listen! There is only a little dirt left in the entrance way. I am going out and crawl through it. Just like a mole. Right out into the sunlight. I feel much stronger than a mole. So this is the end of my little tale. A sad tale, but one with a happy ending. Sunlight! A very happy ending.”
AND that was the end of the manuscript. There only remains to tell Fromwiller’s tale.
At first, I didn’t believe it. But now I do. I put it down, though, just as Fromwiller told it to me, and you can take it or leave it as you choose.
“Soon after we were billeted at Watou,” said Fromwiller, “I decided to go out and see Mount Kemmel. I had heard that things were rather gruesome out there, but I was really not prepared for the conditions that I found. I had seen unburied dead around Roulers and in the Argonne, but it had been almost two months since the fighting on Mount Kemmel and there were still many unburied dead. But there was another thing that I had never seen, and that was the buried living!