Keeping along the roadsides, the by-roads, the field-paths, they were fleeing from the Verdun district, whence they had been evacuated by order.  They were urging on miserable old horses, drawing frail carts, their wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded with mattresses and eiderdowns, with appliances for eating and sleeping, and sometimes too, with cages in which birds were twittering.  On they went, from village to village, seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but not complaining, saying merely: 

“You are going to Verdun?  We have just come from X——.  We were ordered to leave.  It is very difficult to find a place to settle down in.”

Women passed.  Two of them were dragging a little baby-carriage in which an infant lay asleep.  One of them was quite young, the other old.  They held up their skirts out of the mud.  They were wearing little town shoes, and every minute they sank into the slime like ourselves, sometimes above their ankles.

All day long we encountered similar processions.  I do not remember seeing one of these women weep; but they seemed terrified, and mortally tired.

Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became fuller and more regular.  All the roads we caught sight of in the country seemed to be bearing their load of men and of machines.  Here and there a horse which had succumbed at its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock.  A subdued roar rose to the ear, made up of trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the buzz of motors, and of a multitude talking and eating on the march.

Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a wood upon a height whence we could see the whole battle-field.  It was a vast expanse of plains and slopes, studded with the grey woods of winter.  Long trails of smoke from burning buildings settled upon the landscape.  And other trails, minute and multi-coloured, rose from the ground wherever projectiles were raining.  Nothing more:  wisps of smoke, brief flashes visible even in broad daylight, and a string of captive balloons, motionless and observant witnesses of all.

But we were already descending the incline and the various planes of the landscape melted one after the other.  As we were passing over a bridge, I saw in a group of soldiers a friend I had not met since the beginning of the war.  We could not stop, so he walked along with me for a while, and we spent these few minutes recalling the things of the past.  Then as he left me we embraced, though we had never done so in times of peace.

Night was falling.  Knowing that we were now at our last long lap, we encouraged the worn-out men.  At R——­I lost touch with my formation.  I halted on the roadside, calling aloud into the darkness.  An artillery train passed, covering me with mud to my eyes.  Finally, I picked up my friends, and we marched on through villages illumined by the camp fires which were flickering under a driving rain, through a murky country which the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be covered with a multitude of men, of horses, and of martial objects.