others. Ah, one must be really strong
to go on, to go on!"

XXI

The Refuge

FROM this point onwards we are in sight of the enemy observation-posts,
and must no longer leave the communication trenches. First we follow
that of the Pylones road. The trench is cut along the side of the road,
and the road itself is wiped out; so are its trees. Half of it, all the
way along, has been chewed and swallowed by the trench; and what is
left of it has been invaded by the earth and the grass, and mingled
with the fields in the fullness of time. At some places in the
trench--there, where a sandbag has burst and left only a muddy
cell--you may see again on the level of your eyes the stony ballast of
the ex-road, cut to the quick, or even the roots of the bordering trees
that have been cut down to embody in the trench wall. The latter is as
slashed and uneven as if it were a wave of earth and rubbish and dark
scum that the immense plain has spat out and pushed against the edge of
the trench.

We arrive at a junction of trenches, and on the top of the maltreated
hillock which is outlined on the cloudy grayness, a mournful signboard
stands crookedly in the wind. The trench system becomes still more
cramped and close, and the men who are flowing towards the
clearing-station from all parts of the sector multiply and throng in
the deep-dug ways.

These lamentable lanes are staked out with corpses. At uneven intervals
their walls are broken into by quite recent gaps, extending to their
full depth, by funnelholes of fresh earth which trespass upon the
unwholesome land beyond, where earthy bodies are squatting with their
chins on their knees or leaning against the wall as straight and silent
as the rifles which wait beside them. Some of these standing dead turn
their blood-bespattered faces towards the survivors; others exchange
their looks with the sky's emptiness.

Joseph halts to take breath. I say to him as to a child, "We're nearly
there, we're nearly there."

The sinister ramparts of this way of desolation contract still more.
They impel a feeling of suffocation, of a nightmare of falling which
oppresses and strangles: and in these depths where the walls seem to be
coming nearer and closing in, you are forced to halt, to wriggle a path
for yourself, to vex and disturb the dead, to be pushed about by the
endless disorder of the files that flow along these hinder trenches,
files made up of messengers, of the maimed, of