To the Subaltern it seemed an added indictment of war that these wretched animals should be flung into that vortex of slaughter.  He pitied them intensely, the sight of them hurt him; and the smell of them nauseated him.  Every memory of the whole advance is saturated with that odour.  It was pungent, vigorous, demoralising.  It filled the air, and one’s lungs shrank before it.  Once, when a man drove his pick through the crisp, inflated side, a gas spurted out that was positively asphyxiating and intolerable.

However much transport the Germans abandoned, however severe the losses they sustained, they always found time to break open every estaminet they passed, and drain it dry.  Wretched inns and broken bottles proved to be just as reliable a clue to their passing as the smell of them.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DEFENCE OF THE BRANDY

The next morning two companies were detached from the Battalion as escort to a brigade of artillery.  The other two companies, who had returned during the night, did not seem to be greatly upset by their gruesome task of burying the dead.

They did not come in contact with the enemy, and no outstanding incident impressed itself upon the Subaltern’s mind.  The heat had abated with dramatic swiftness.  A wind that was almost chilly swept the plains, driving grey clouds continually across the sun.  The summer was over.  That day they joined battle with the outposts of a foe that was to prove more hateful and persistent than the German winter.

The name of a village known as Suchy-le-Chateau figured on many of the signposts that they passed, but they never arrived there, and, branching off east of Braisne, they came upon the remainder of the Battalion, drawn up in a stubble field.

A driving rain had begun to fall early in the afternoon, and when at length the march was finished their condition was deplorable.  Though tired out with a long day’s march, they dared not rest, because to lie down in the sodden straw was to court sickness.  Their boots, worn and unsoled, offered no resistance whatever to the damp.  Very soon they could hear their sodden socks squelching with water as they walked.  A night of veritable horror lay in front of them; they were appalled with the prospect of it.  The rain seemed to mock at the completeness of their misery.

However, the Fates were kind, for the General, happening to pass, took pity on them and allowed them to be billeted in the outhouses of a farm near by.  The sense of relief which this move gave to the Subaltern was too huge to describe.  Contentment took possession of him utterly.  The tension of his nerves and muscles relaxed:  he thought that the worries and hardships of that day, at least, were over.

But he was wrong.