He indicates a space in the plain with his finger, and with a
stupefied air, as though he came out of a dream--"The Red Tavern!"
It is a flat field, carpeted with broken bricks.
And what is that, there? A milestone? No, it is not a milestone. It
is a head, a black head, tanned and polished. The mouth is all
askew, and you can see something of the mustache bristling on each
side--the great head of a carbonized cat. The corpse--it is
German--is underneath, buried upright.
"And that?" It is a ghastly collection containing an entirely white
skull, and then, six feet away, a pair of boots, and between the two
a heap of frayed leather and of rags, cemented by brown mud.
"Come on, there's less fog already. We must hurry."
A hundred yards in front of us, among the more transparent waves of
fog that are changing places with us and hide us less and less, a
shell whistles and bursts. It has fallen in the spot we are just
nearing. We are descending, and the gradient is less steep. We go
side by side. My companion says nothing, but looks to right and to
left. Then he stops again, as he did at the top of the road. I hear
his faltering voice, almost inaudible--"What's this! We're
there--this is it--"
In point of fact we have not left the plain, the vast plain, seared
and barren--but we are in Souchez!
The village has disappeared, nor have I seen a village go so
completely. Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, and Carency. these still retained
some shape of a place, with their collapsed and truncated houses,
their yards heaped high with plaster and tiles.
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