The slope by
which we descend is known as the Zouaves' Cells. In the May attack,
the Zouaves had all begun to dig themselves individual shelters, and
round these they were exterminated. Some are still seen, prone on
the brim of an incipient hole, with their trenching-tools in their
fleshless hands or looking at them with the cavernous hollows where
shrivel the entrails of eyes. The ground is so full of dead that the
earth-falls uncover places that bristle with feet, with half-clothed
skeletons, and with ossuaries of skulls placed side by side on the
steep slope like porcelain globe-jars.
In the ground here there are several strata of dead and in many
places the delving of the shells has brought out the oldest and set
them out in display on the top of the new ones. The bottom of the
ravine is completely carpeted with debris of weapons, clothing, and
implements. One tramples shell fragments, old iron, loaves and even
biscuits that have fallen from knapsacks and are not yet dissolved
by the rain. Mess-tins, pots of jam. and helmets are pierced and
riddled by bullets--the scrapings and scum of a hell-broth; and the
dislocated posts that survive are stippled with holes.
The trenches that run in this valley have a look of earthquake
crevasses, and as if whole tombs of uncouth things had been emptied
on the ruins of the earth's convulsion. And there, where no dead
are, the very earth is cadaverous.
We follow the International Trench, still fluttering with rainbow
rags--a shapeless trench which the confusion of torn stuffs invests
with an air of a trench assassinated--to a place where the irregular
and winding ditch forms an elbow.
Pages:
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341