Our comrades shout and come running, and we gather in the little
square where the church stands with its twin towers--so thoroughly
mutilated by a shell that one can no longer look it in the face.






5

Sanctuary





THE dim road which rises through the middle of the night-bound wood
is so strangely full of obstructing shadows that the deep darkness
of the forest itself might by some magic have overflowed upon it. It
is the regiment on the march, in quest of a new home.

The weighty ranks of the shadows, burdened both high and broad,
hustle each other blindly. Each wave, pushed by the following,
stumbles upon the one in front, while alongside and detached are the
evolutions of those less bulky ghosts, the N.C.O.'s. A clamor of
confusion, compound of exclamations, of scraps of chat, of words of
command, of spasms of coughing and of song, goes up from the dense
mob enclosed between the banks. To the vocal commotion is added the