The
things which here and there seem only distorted limbs are denuded
trees. We cannot see far around us in the damp reek; besides, we
only look downwards at the mud in which we slide--"Porridge!"
Going across country we knead and pound a sticky paste which spreads
out and flows back from every step--"Chocolate cream--coffee
creams!"
On the stony parts, the wiped-out ruins of roads that have become
barren as the fields, the marching troop breaks through a layer of
slime into a flinty conglomerate that grates and gives way under our
iron-shod soles--"Seems as if we were walking on buttered toast!"
On the slope of a knoll sometimes, the mud is black and thick and
deep-rutted, like that which forms around the horse-ponds in
villages, and in these ruts there are lakes and puddles and ponds,
whose edges seem to be in rags.
The pleasantries of the wags, who in the early freshness of the
journey had cried, "Quack, quack," when they went through the water,
are now becoming rare and gloomy; gradually the jokers are damped
down. The rain begins to fall heavily. The daylight dwindles, and
the confusion that is space contracts. The last lingering light
welters on the ground and in the water.
A steaming silhouette of men like monks appears through the rain in
the west. It is a company of the 204th, wrapped in tent-cloths. As
we go by we see the pale and shrunken faces and the dark noses of
these dripping prowlers before they disappear.
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