ds of negroes blown out in goldbeaters' skin. Between
two bodies, protruding uncertainly from one or the other, is a severed
wrist, ending with a cluster of strings.

Others are shapeless larvae of pollution, with dubious items of
equipment pricking up, or bits of bone. Farther on, a corpse has been
brought in in such a state that they have been obliged--so as not to
lose it on the way--to pile it on a lattice of wire which was then
fastened to the two ends of a stake. Thus was it carried in the hollow
of its metal hammock, and laid there. You cannot make out either end of
the body; alone, in the heap that it makes, one recognizes the gape of
a trouser-pocket. An insect goes in and out of it.

Around the dead flutter letters that have escaped from pockets or
cartridge pouches while they were being placed on the ground. Over one
of these bits of white paper, whose wings still beat though the mud
ensnares them, I stoop slightly and read a sentence--"My dear Henry,
what a fine day it is for your birthday!" The man is on his belly; his
loins are rent from hip to hip by a deep furrow; his head is half
turned round; we see a sunken eye; and on temples, cheek and neck a
kind of green moss is growing.

A sickening atmosphere roams with the wind around these dead and the
heaped-up debris, that lies about them--tent-cloth or clothing in
stained tatters, stiff with dried blood, charred by the scorch of the
shell, hardened, earthy and already rotting, quick with swarming and
questing things. It troubles us. We look at each other and shake our
heads, nor dare admit aloud that the place smells bad. All the same, we
go away slowly.

Now come breaking out of the fog the bowed backs of men who are joined
together by something they are carrying. They are Territorial
stretcher-bearers with a new corpse. They come up with their old wan
faces, toiling, sweating, and grimacing with the effort. To carry a
dead man in the lateral trenches when they are muddy is a work almost
beyond human power. They put down the body, which is dressed in new
clothes.

"It's not long since, now, that he was standing," says one of the
bearers. "It's two hours since he got his bullet in the head for going
to look for a Boche rifle in the plain. He was going on leave on
Wednesday and wanted to take a rifle home with him. He is a sergeant of
the 405th, Class 1914. A nice lad, too."

He takes away the handkerchief that is over the face. It is quite
young, an