I have a notion
that many of us missed their footing and fell to the ground. I jump
sideways to miss the suddenly erect bayonet of a toppling rifle.
Quite close to me, Farfadet jostles me with his face bleeding,
throws himself on Volpatte who is beside me and clings to him.
Volpatte doubles up without slackening his rush and drags him along
some paces, then shakes him off without looking at him and without
knowing who be is, and shouts at him in a breaking voice almost
choked with exertion: "Let me go, let me go, nom de Dieu! They'll
pick you up directly--don't worry."
The other man sinks to the ground, and his face, plastered with a
scarlet mask and void of all expression, turns in every direction;
while Volpatte, already in the distance, automatically repeats
between his teeth, "Don't worry," with a steady forward gaze on the
line.
A shower of bullets spirts around me, increasing the number of those
who suddenly halt, who collapse slowly, defiant and gesticulating,
of those who dive forward solidly with all the body's burden, of the
shouts, deep, furious, and desperate, and even of that hollow and
terrible gasp when a man's life goes bodily forth in a breath. And
we who are not yet stricken, we look ahead, we walk and we run,
among the frolics of the death that strikes at random into our
flesh.
The wire entanglements--and there is one stretch of them intact. We
go along to where it has been gutted into a wide and deep opening.
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