In
the evening, a sap was dug to reach the place where they had fallen.
The work could not be finished in one night and was resumed by the
pioneers the following night, for, overwhelmed with fatigue, we
could no longer keep from falling asleep.
Awaking from a leaden sleep, I saw the four corpses that the sappers
had reached from underneath, hooking and then hauling them into the
sap with ropes. Each of them had several adjoining wounds,
bullet-holes an inch or so apart--the mitrailleuse had fired fast.
The body of Mesnil Andre was not found, and his brother
Joseph did some mad escapades in search of it. He went out quite
alone into No Man's Land, where the crossed fire of machine-guns
swept it three ways at once and constantly. In the morning, dragging
himself along like a slug, he showed over the bank a face black with
mud and horribly wasted. They pulled him in again, with his face
scratched by barbed wire, his hands bleeding, with heavy clods of
mud in the folds of his clothes, and stinking of death. Like an
idiot be kept on saying, "He's nowhere." He buried himself in a
corner with his rifle, which he set himself to clean without hearing
what was said to him, and only repeating "He's nowhere."
It is four nights ago since that night, and as the dawn comes once
again to cleanse the earthly Gehenna, the bodies are becoming
definitely distinct.
Barque in his rigidity seems immoderately long, his arms lie closely
to the body, his chest has sunk, his belly is hollow as a basin.
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