"Do you know where the Staff of the ---- Corps is?" I asked.

The man shrugged his shoulders to show that he didn't, and that he
didn't care. What did it matter to him? His job was to get the goods
loaded, forget nothing, and then to go to his appointed post where he
would have to wait for further orders to unload his stuff in the
evening. He had enough to do. What did anything else matter to him?
However, he pointed in a vague manner: "They went over there...."

Off I started again over the wide undulating plain. The noise of the
cannonade became louder and louder, and I now perceived traces of the
work of death. At a turning of the road there were a couple of dead
horses that had been dragged into the ditch. I cannot say how painful
the sight was to me. Apparently a dead horse at the seat of war is a
trifle, and no doubt I should very soon see it with indifference. But
these were the first I had seen, and I could not help casting a glance
of pity at them. Poor beasts! A month before they had been showing off
their fine points in the well-kept stables of the artillery barracks.
When I saw them their stiffened corpses bore traces of all their
sufferings. Their harness had rubbed great sores in their flesh, in
more places than one. Their glazed eyes seemed to be still appealing
for pity. They had fallen down exhausted, finding it impossible to
keep up with their fellows. They had been quickly unharnessed, so as
not to block up the road; had been dragged on to the sunburnt grass,
and it was there no doubt the death-agony that had already lasted for
some hours had come to an end.

We went on, and, in the distance, here and there on the plain, which
now stretched before us for miles, we saw more of them. I wondered how