Just beyond the town, though, we met a wagon--a furniture dealer's
wagon--from some larger community, which had been impressed by the
Belgian authorities, military or civil, for ambulance service. A jaded
team of horses drew it, and white flags with red crosses in their
centers drooped over the wheels, fore and aft. One man led the near
horse by the bit and two other men walked behind the wagon. All three
of them had Red Cross brassards on the sleeves of their coats.

The wagon had a hood on it, but was open at both ends. Overhauling it
we saw that it contained two dead soldiers--French foot-soldiers. The
bodies rested side by side on the wagon bed. Their feet somehow were
caught up on the wagon seat so that their stiff legs, in the baggy red
pants, slanted upward, and the two dead men had the look of being about
to glide backward and out of the wagon.

The blue-clad arms of one of them were twisted upward in a half-arc,
encircling nothing; and as the wheels jolted over the rutted cobbles
these two bent arms joggled and swayed drunkenly. The other's head was
canted back so that, as we passed, we looked right into his face. It
was a young face--we could tell that much, even through the mask of
caked mud on the drab-white skin--and it might once have been a comely
face. It was not comely now.

Peering into the wagon we saw that the dead man's face had been partly
shot or shorn away--the lower jaw was gone; so that it had become an
abominable thing to look on. These two had been men the day before. Now
they were carrion and would be treated as such; for as we looked back we
saw the wagon turn off the high road into a field where the wild red
poppies, like blobs of red blood, grew thick between rows of neglected