"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, and at
every faint puff of wind sparks floated about them like falling stars.
"But other fires were burning. Under the cover of darkness the Germans
had piled the dead into great heaps and had covered them with straw and
paraffin; then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres.
"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own
comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his
unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest
waiting for him to die. That is war.
"The German shells were terrifying. I confess to you that there were
times when my nerves were absolutely gone. I crouched down with my men
(we were in open formation) and ducked my head at the sound of the
bursting shell, and I trembled in every limb as though I had a fit of
ague.
"It is true that in reality the German shells are not very effective.
Only about one in four explodes nicely, but it is a bad thing when, as
happened to me, the shells plopped around in a diameter of fifty meters.
One hears the zip-zip of bullets, the boom of the great guns, the
ste-tang of our French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of
noise and stench, the screams at times of dying horses and men joined
with the fury of gunfire and rising shrill above it, no man may boast of
his courage.
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