rate certainty that they are
going to die. They lie down there in a tiny, little black hell of
their own and fight with all their might and main, feeling that they
will die instantly if they skip one little short breath. (I was going
to say they fight with all their soul and body, but they no longer
really possess either of these). They have no time to speak, or
listen, or move, or be helped, as every particle of energy must be
used for the next respiration. A jumbled heap lies in the straw
covered with a blanket to keep off the flies. An attendant looks at
its side in search of the fluttering little pulsation of breath. If it
is there, "he" is living; if all is still, "it" is dead, and they
carry it out and dump it in the hall with the other bodies.

* * * * *

The little village of Ecury-le-Repos had been deserted by every one
but its Mayor, who mistook us for Germans, and as such faced us
bravely and with dignity. He very correctly refused to believe that we
were not of the enemy until he had examined our papers. His village
was not a pleasant sight. He said that it had been taken and retaken
many times and that there had been fighting in its streets as recently
as yesterday; its houses were battered and rent by shells and many
had burned down and still smouldered; no earthquake could have ruined
them more thoroughly. The narrow village streets were littered ankle
deep with a muddy, rotting pot-pourri in which one detected broken
glass, bits of brick, cartridges, roof slates, broken bottles, shreds
of clothing, shells, fragments, shrapnel cases, and kepis. Dead men
lay in the gutters, covered with filth to such an extent that one
almost failed to recognize what they were.

In their last retreat the Germans had dragged their desperately
wounded into halls and doorways in order that they might be out from
under foot, and there they still lay. Half of them were mercifully
already dead. We looked into one hallway only. Here amidst a stifling
stench, five Germans were propped up; three were dead and the other
two barely alive; all were covered black with flies and the living and
the dead were eaten by white, weaving masses of maggots.

Ecury-le-Repos is situated in a little circular hollow, with elevated
table-lands all around. Here where the table-lands begin to dip down,
the Germans had defended themselves against the advancing French. As
they faced southward toward the oncoming enemy,