Along the road came German prisoners, marching rapidly between mounted
guards. Many of them were wounded, and all of them had a wild, famished,
terror-stricken look.
At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone
of fire. Away across the fields was a line of villages with the town of
Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps a mile and a quarter away.
From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns which met at
the top in a great black pall. At every moment this blackness was
brightened by puffs of electric blue, extraordinarily vivid, as shells
burst in the air. From the mass of houses in each town came jets of
flame, following explosions which sounded with terrific thudding shocks.
On a line of about nine miles there was an incessant cannonade. The
farthest villages were already on fire.
Quite close to us, only about half a mile across the fields to the left,
there were Belgian batteries at work and rifle fire from many trenches.
We were between two fires, and Belgian and German shells came screeching
over our heads. The German shells were dropping quite close to us,
plowing up the fields with great pits. We could hear them burst and
scatter and could see them burrow.
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