y was certain--"if the
civilians hold out."--Tr.

III

The Return

RELUCTANTLY the ashen dawn is bleaching the still dark and formless
landscape. Between the declining road on the right that falls into the
gloom, and the black cloud of the Alleux Wood--where we hear the convoy
teams assembling and getting under way--a field extends. We have
reached it, we of the 6th Battalion, at the end of the night. We have
piled arms, and now, in the center of this circle of uncertain light,
our feet in the mist and mud, we stand in dark clusters (that yet are
hardly blue), or as solitary phantoms; and the heads of all are turned
towards the road that comes from "down there." We are waiting for the
rest of the regiment, the 5th Battalion, who were in the first line and
left the trenches after us.

Noises; "There they are!" A long and shapeless mass appears in the west
and comes down out of the night upon the dawning road.

At last! It is ended, the accursed shift that began at six o'clock
yesterday evening and has lasted all night, and now the last man has
stepped from the last communication trench.

This time it has been an awful sojourn in the trenches. The 18th
company was foremost and has been cut up, eighteen killed and fifty
wounded--one in three less in four days. And this without attack--by
bombardment alone.

This is known to us, and as the mutilated battalion approaches down
there, and we join them in trampling the muddy field and exchanging
nods of recognition, we cry, "What about the 18th?" We are thinking as
we put the question, "If it goes on like this, what is to become of all
of us? What will become of me?"

The 17th, the 19th, and the 20th arrive in turn and pile arms. "There's
the 18th!" It arrives after all the others; having held the first
trench, it has been last relieved.

The light is a little cleaner, and the world is paling. We can make
out, as he comes down the road, the company's captain, ahead of his men
and alone. He helps himself along with a stick, and walks with
difficulty, by reason of his old wound of the Marne battle that
rheumatism is troubling; and there are other pangs, too. He lowers his
hooded head, and might be attending a funeral. We can see that in his
mind he is indeed following the dead, and his thoughts are with them.

Here is the company, debouching in dire disorder, and our hearts are
heavy. It is obviously shorter than the other three, in the march past
of the bat