The others, sniffing and shivering
with cold, wiping their noses with limp and sodden handkerchiefs,
watch and remark, cursing the obstacles in the way with fragments of
profanity. "It's like watching fireworks," they say.
And to complete the illusion of a great operatic scene, fairy-like
but sinister, before which our bent and black party crawls and
splashes, behold a red star, and then a green; then a sheaf of red
fire, very much tardier. In our ranks, as the available half of our
pairs of eyes watch the display, we cannot help murmuring in idle
tones of popular admiration, "Ah, a red one!"--"Look, a green one!"
It is the Germans who are sending up signals, and our men as well
who are asking for artillery support.
Our road turns and climbs again as the day at last decides to
appear. Everything looks dirty. A layer of stickiness, pearl-gray
and white, covers the road, and around it the real world makes a
mournful appearance. Behind us we leave ruined Souchez, whose houses
are only flat heaps of rubbish and her trees but humps of
bramble-like slivers. We plunge into a hole on our left, the
entrance to the communication trench. We let our loads fall in a
circular enclosure prepared for them, and both hot and frozen we
settled in the trench and wait our hands abraded, wet, and stiff
with cramp.
Buried in our holes up to the chin, our chests heaving against the
solid bulk of the ground that protects us, we watch the dazzling and
deepening drama develop.
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