All them that trod on the edge of a
shell-hole last night, they're dead. Down there where we're coming
from you can see a head in the ground, working its arms, embedded.
There's a hurdle-path that's given way in places and the hurdles
have sunk into holes, and it's a man-trap. Where there's no more
hurdles there's two yards deep of water. Your rifle? You couldn't
pull it out again when you'd stuck it in. Look at those men, there.
They've cut off all the bottom half of their great-coats--hard lines
on the pockets--to help 'em get clear, and also because they hadn't
strength to drag a weight like that. Dumas' coat, we were able to
pull it off him, and it weighed a good eighty pounds; we could just
lift it, two of us, with both our hands. Look--him with the bare
legs; it's taken everything off him, his trousers, his drawers, his
boots, all dragged off by the mud. One's never seen that, never."
Scattered and straggling, the herd takes flight in a fever of fear,
their feet pulling huge stumps of mud out of the ground. We watch
the human flotsam fade away, and the lumps of them diminish, immured
in enormous clothes.
We get up, and at once the icy wind makes us tremble like trees.
Slowly we veer towards the mass formed by two men curiously joined,
leaning shoulder to shoulder, and each with an arm round the neck of
the other. Is it the hand-to-hand fight of two soldiers who have
overpowered each other in death and still hold their own, who can
never again lose their grip? No; they are two men who recline upon
each other so as to sleep.
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