, are
dramatically ludicrous, for the whelming mud from which they still take
flight has half unclothed them.

As they pass by their glances go widely around. They look at us, and
discovering men in us they cry through the wind, "It's worse down
yonder than it is here. The chaps are falling into the holes, and you
can't pull them out. All them that trod on the edge of a shell-hole
last night, they're dead. Down there where we're coming from you can
see a head in the ground, working its arms, embedded. There's a
hurdle-path that's given way in places and the hurdles have sunk into
holes, and it's a man-trap. Where there's no more hurdles there's two
yards deep of water. Your rifle? You couldn't pull it out again when
you'd stuck it in. Look at those men, there. They've cut off all the
bottom half of their great-coats--hard lines on the pockets--to help
'em get clear, and also because they hadn't strength to drag a weight
like that. Dumas' coat, we were able to pull it off him, and it weighed
a good eighty pounds; we could just lift it, two of us, with both our
hands. Look--him with the bare legs; it's taken everything off him, his
trousers, his drawers, his boots, all dragged off by the mud. One's
never seen that, never."

Scattered and straggling, the herd takes flight in a fever of fear,
their feet pulling huge stumps of mud out of the ground. We watch the
human flotsam fade away, and the lumps of them diminish, immured in
enormous clothes.

We get up, and at once the icy wind makes us tremble like trees. Slowly
we veer towards the mass formed by two men curiously joined, leaning
shoulder to shoulder, and each with an arm round the neck of the other.
Is it the hand-to-hand fight of two soldiers who have overpowered each
other in death and still hold their own, who can never again lose their
grip? No; they are two men who recline upon each other so as to sleep.
As they might not spread themselves on the falling earth that was ready
to spread itself on them, they have supported each other, clasping each
other's shoulder; and thus plunged in the ground up to their knees,
they have gone to sleep.

We respect their stillness, and withdraw from the twin statue of human
wretchedness.

Soon we must halt ourselves. We have expected too much of our strength
and can go no farther. It is not yet ended. We collapse once more in a
churned corner, with a noise as if one shot a load of dung.

From time to time we open our eyes