December 8, 1914.

Half awake, I stretch out my hand to see whether Dutrex is there. His palliasse is deserted, his rug folded up. I raise myself on my elbow. All the others are still asleep, lying like long mute mummies. I draw on my shoes. At the main entrance, the sentries, hands in pockets, heads between their shoulders, are stamping their feet, their eyes white with cold. “Guten Morgen!”—“Guten Morgen!” I grope my way down the stair and along the passage. The lamps have gone out. There is a light in No. 22. I go in. Dutrex is shaving; his little mirror is perched on the vice. In front of him stands a smoky lamp. All around is darkness. Bouquet passes from one cauldron to another, singing softly and sentimentally:

The kitchen is full of sulphurous fumes. “What time is it?”—“Five o’clock.” Dutrex has finished shaving. I take his place before the mirror and the lamp with the broken chimney. Some one knocks at the door. A little man comes in. He wears a fatigue-cap; his head is bowed, his face is tied up in a handkerchief, he holds his left cheek with both hands. He looks at us like a whipped dog. “I’m in such pain!”—“What’s the matter?” asks Bouquet, who is tender-hearted. The poor fellow is unable to speak plainly. “I have been walking up and down the corridors for a long time. I can’t keep still. My wound is gnawing at me. It seems to be screaming there, just under the ear!”—“Poor chap, you must see Laloux, but he is still asleep. Sit down there between the stoves. There’s a stool for you. Drink a mug of coffee while you’re waiting. That’ll warm you.”—“Yes, I’m perished with cold.”

Instead of a cheek he has a great violet crevasse with lines of scar tissue radiating from it. He was struck by a bullet which passed in obliquely through the nose and on its way out shattered half the left side of the face, including the articulation of the jaw. He has an abscess forming in the internal ear, which is pretty sure to kill him. While I shave, I look at this reservist.

He arrived with the last batch of convalescent wounded. Most of them were but half cured. They were sent away from Ingolstadt to make room for refugees from Pomerania, children, women, and old men, broken down through privation. The Russian wave is washing these refugees by thousands into the southern hutments.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Not quite so much.”

“Where are you from?”

“From a village near Mans.”

“Do you think that your missus will be able to love you with that hole in your cheek and your hanging jaw?”

“I hope so.”

“Where were you in barracks?”

“At Saint-Mihiel.”

“Where did you get your wound?”

“At Marville, near Virton, in Belgium.”

“Long ago?”

“August 24th.”

“Here’s another mug of coffee for you.”

The man, Vouvard by name, puts his hand behind the ear, closes his eyes, and rocks to and fro, saying: “I don’t know what to do, it hurts so.”

The cooks come in. With great hooks they take down the boiling cauldrons. Dutrex goes out for the roll-call. Steam fills the casemate, stifling us, and I open the window. Day is breaking; tiny clouds of a pale silver tint are floating at a great altitude. DeschÊnes, the woodman from the forest of Argonne, catching sight of the white frost on the slope, says with conviction: “This sort of weather gives one the hump here. Think how jolly it would be to be at work. Think how there are people perishing of hunger while we are shut up here doing nothing. And when we get home we shall have to work ourselves to death to pay off the debts our wives have made while we have been away. A lot of good one gets out of war!”

Dutrex enters with a martial stride. “I say, Riou, here are the latest orders from headquarters: ‘The purveyors and the workmen employed at the fort must be accompanied by a soldier of the guard; the prisoners are forbidden to approach them. The sale of food and drink to prisoners is strictly forbidden. The commandants are responsible for seeing that these orders are carried out.’”

“Very well, the slopes are also forbidden. I will immediately go for a walk there.”

I linger on the ramparts. The sun is about to rise. The air is pure, like that of the high mountains. Beyond the huge Danubian plain I catch sight for the first time of the blue serrations of the Tyrolese Alps, crowning the delicate lines of the middle distance. To-day is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The air is filled with the sound of bells. The deep notes of those of Ingolstadt mingle with the brighter chimes of Hepperg, Wegstetten, and Lenting. The cocks are crowing. The crows are flying at a great height, and the harmonious silence is broken from time to time by their croakings. Everything glistens. The sky is superb. The earth rejoices. The soul finds refreshment and delight in the elysian dawn.

Over there, towards the rising sun, upon the Warthe and in the Carpathian defiles, men are killing one another. In the opposite quarter, beyond the gentle undulations dotted with white farms and beyond the magnificent barrier of the Swabian Jura, men are killing one another in Alsace, in Lorraine, and in Flanders. The villages of Europe are filled with truncated limbs, wooden legs, broken lives. Poor world of men!