, where white teeth still gleam in
some cavities, by the side of poor darkening stumps that abound like a
field of old roots laid bare, one discovers naked yellow skulls wearing
the red cloth fez, whose gray cover has crumbled like paper. Some
thigh-bones protrude from the heaps of rags stuck together with reddish
mud; and from the holes filled with clothes shredded and daubed with a
sort of tar, a spinal fragment emerges. Some ribs are scattered on the
soil like old cages broken; and close by, blackened leathers are
afloat, with water-bottles and drinking-cups pierced and flattened.
About a cloven knapsack, on the top of some bones and a cluster of bits
of cloth and accouterments, some white points are evenly scattered; by
stooping one can see that they are the finger and toe constructions of
what was once a corpse.

Sometimes only a rag emerges from long mounds to indicate that some
human being was there destroyed, for all these unburied dead end by
entering the soil.

The Germans, who were here yesterday, abandoned their soldiers by the
side of ours without interring them--as witness these three putrefied
corpses on the top of each other, in each other, with their round gray
caps whose red edge is hidden with a gray band, their yellow-gray
jackets, and their green faces. I look for the features of one of them.
From the depth of his neck up to the tufts of hair that stick to the
brim of his cap is just an earthy mass, the face become an anthill, and
two rotten berries in place of the eyes. Another is a dried emptiness
flat on its belly, the back in tatters that almost flutter, the hands,
feet, and face enrooted in the soil.

"Look! It's a new one, this--"

In the middle of the plateau and in the depth of the rainy and bitter
air, on the ghastly morrow of this debauch of slaughter, there is a
head planted in the ground, a wet and bloodless head, with a heavy
beard.

It is one of ours, and the helmet is beside it. The distended eyelids
permit a little to be seen of the dull porcelain of his eyes, and one
lip shines like a slug in the shapeless beard. No doubt he fell into a
shell-hole, which was filled up by another shell, burying him up to the
neck like the cat's-head German of the Red Tavern at Souchez.

"I don't know him," says Joseph, who has come up very slowly and speaks
with difficulty.

"I recognize him," replies Volpatte.

"That bearded man?" says Joseph.

"He has no beard. Look--" Stooping, Volpatt