t adventurers, or warriors,
or made for human slaughter, neither butchers nor cattle. They are
laborers and artisans whom one recognizes in their uniforms. They are
civilians uprooted, and they are ready. They await the signal for death
or murder; but you may see, looking at their faces between the vertical
gleams of their bayonets, that they are simply men.

Each one knows that he is going to take his head, his chest, his belly,
his whole body, and all naked, up to the rifles pointed forward, to the
shells, to the bombs piled and ready, and above all to the methodical
and almost infallible machine-guns--to all that is waiting for him
yonder and is now so frightfully silent--before he reaches the other
soldiers that he must kill. They are not careless of their lives, like
brigands, nor blinded by passion like savages. In spite of the
doctrines with which they have been cultivated they are not inflamed.
They are above instinctive excesses. They are not drunk, either
physically or morally. It is in full consciousness, as in full health
and full strength, that they are massed there to hurl themselves once
more into that sort of madman's part imposed on all men by the madness
of the human race. One sees the thought and the fear and the farewell
that there is in their silence, their stillness, in the mask of
tranquillity which unnaturally grips their faces. They are not the kind
of hero one thinks of, but their sacrifice has greater worth than they
who have not seen them will ever be able to understand.

They are waiting; a waiting that extends and seems eternal. Now and
then one or another starts a little when a bullet, fired from the other
side, skims the forward embankment that shields us and plunges into the
flabby flesh of the rear wall.

The end of the day is spreading a sublime but melancholy light on that
strong unbroken mass of beings of whom some only will live to see the
night. It is raining--there is always rain in my memories of all the
tragedies of the great war. The evening is making ready, along with a
vague and chilling menace; it is about to set for men that snare that
is as wide as the world.

* * * * *

New orders are peddled from mouth to mouth. Bombs strung on wire hoops
are distributed--"Let each man take two bombs!"

The major goes by. He is restrained in his gestures, in undress,
girded, undecorated. We hear him say, "There's something good, mes
enfants, the Boches ar