One sees
and one feels the fragments passing close to one's head with their
hiss of red-hot iron plunged in water. The blast of one explosion so
burns my hands that I let my rifle fall. I pick it up again,
reeling, and set off in the tawny-gleaming tempest with lowered
head, lashed by spirits of dust and soot in a crushing downpour like
volcanic lava. The stridor of the bursting shells hurts your ears,
beats you on the neck, goes through your temples, and you cannot
endure it without a cry. The gusts of death drive us on, lift us up,
rock us to and fro. We leap, and do not know whither we go. Our eyes
are blinking and weeping and obscured. The view before us is blocked
by a flashing avalanche that fills space.
It is the barrage fire. We have to go through that whirlwind of fire
and those fearful showers that vertically fall. We are passing
through. We are through it, by chance. Here and there I have seen
forms that spun round and were lifted up and laid down, illumined by
a brief reflection from over yonder. I have glimpsed strange faces
that uttered some sort of cry--you could see them without hearing
them in the roar of annihilation. A brasier full of red and black
masses huge and furious fell about me, excavating the ground,
tearing it from under my feet, throwing me aside like a bouncing
toy. I remember that I strode over a smoldering corpse, quite black,
with a tissue of rosy blood shriveling on him; and I remember, too,
that the skirts of the greatcoat flying next to me had caught fire,
and left a trail of smoke behind.
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