On our right, all along Trench 97,
our glances were drawn and dazzled by a rank of frightful flames,
closely crowded against each other like men.
Forward!
Now, we are nearly running. I see some who fall solidly flat, face
forward, and others who founder meekly, as though they would sit
down on the ground. We step aside abruptly to avoid the prostrate
dead, quiet and rigid, or else offensive, and also--more perilous
snares!--the wounded that hook on to you, struggling.
The International Trench! We are there. The wire entanglements have
been torn up into long roots and creepers, thrown afar and coiled
up, swept away and piled in great drifts by the guns. Between these
big bushes of rain-damped steel the ground is open and free.
The trench is not defended. The Germans have abandoned it, or else a
first wave has already passed over it. Its interior bristles with
rifles placed against the bank. In the bottom are scattered corpses.
From the jumbled litter of the long trench, hands emerge that
protrude from gray sleeves with red facings, and booted legs. In
places the embankment is destroyed and its woodwork splintered--all
the flank of the trench collapsed and fallen into an indescribable
mixture. In other places, round pits are yawning. And of all that
moment I have best retained the vision of a whimsical trench covered
with many-colored rags and tatters. For the making of their sandbags
the Germans had used cotton and woolen stuffs of motley design
pillaged from some house-furnisher's shop; and all this hotch-potch
of colored remnants, mangled and frayed, floats and flaps and dances
in our faces.
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