It is the end of all. For the moment it is the prodigious finish,
the epic cessation of the war.
I once used to think that the worst hell in war was the flame of
shells; and then for long I thought it was the suffocation of the
caverns which eternally confine us. But it is neither of these. Hell
is water.
The wind is rising, and its icy breath goes through our flesh. On
the wrecked and dissolving plain, flecked with bodies between its
worm-shaped chasms of water, among the islands of motionless men
stuck together like reptiles, in this flattening and sinking chaos
there are some slight indications of movement. We see slowly
stirring groups and fragments of groups, composed of beings who bow
under the weight of their coats and aprons of mud, who trail
themselves along, disperse, and crawl about in the depths of the
sky's tarnished light. The dawn is so foul that one would say the
day was already done.
These survivors are migrating across the desolated steppe, pursued
by an unspeakable evil which exhausts and bewilders them. They are
lamentable objects; and some, when they are fully seen, are
dramatically ludicrous, for the whelming mud from which they still
take flight has half unclothed them.
As they pass by their glances go widely around. They look at us, and
discovering men in us they cry through the wind, "It's worse down
yonder than it is here. The chaps are falling into the holes, and
you can't pull them out.
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