Beside
them--an awful watchman!--the half of a man is standing, a man
sliced in two from scalp to stomach, upright against the earthen
wall. I do not know where the other half of this human post may be,
whose eye hangs down above and whose bluish viscera curl spirally
round his leg.
Down below, one's foot detaches itself from a matrix of blood,
stiffened with French bayonets that have been bent, doubled, and
twisted by the force of the blow. Through a gap in the mutilated
wall one espies a recess where the bodies of soldiers of the
Prussian Guard seem to kneel in the pose of suppliants, run through
from behind, with blood-stained gaps, impaled. Out of this group
they have pulled to its edge a huge Senegalese tirailleur, who,
petrified in the contorted position where death seized him, leans
upon empty air and holds fast by his feet, staring at his two
severed wrists. No doubt a bomb had exploded in his hands; and since
all his face is alive, he seems to be gnawing maggots.
"It was here," says a passing soldier of an Alpine regiment, "that
they did the white flag trick; and as they'd got Africans to deal
with, you bet they got it hot!--Tiens, there's the white flag itself
that these dunghills used."
He seizes and shakes a long handle that lies there. A square of
white stuff is nailed to it, and unfolds itself innocently.
A procession of shovel-bearers advances along the battered trench.
They have an order to shovel the earth into the relics of the
trenches, to stop everything up, so that the bodies may be buried on
the spot.
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