More treacherous than the whistling of shells, the bullets pass above our heads, but he himself does not hurry in the least. Here are posted, in the hollowed-out earth, finding places as best they can, the look-out men, and in shelters very little safer, our machine-guns.
Dawn begins to appear, eclipsing the light of the moon. Half lying on the parapet, I see a glorious spring sunrise. It awakens the plains of the Woevre, lighting up the rivulets and pools. Here is Vaux village on the right, and Damloup village on the left. Farther on, that large cluster of ruined houses must be Étain. In the rising sun they form a white lace*-work of stone, recalling the cities of the East. And yonder are the frowning hillsides of Hardaumont. Douaumont towers above, Douaumont still swathed in darkness, like an evil spirit.
More efficiently than the enemy, the sunshine climbs the slopes of the fort. It is light and airy, like a bearer of good tidings. Smiling, it shows me, in front, two or three hundred yards beyond the counterscarp, on the sloping turf, several greenish lumps almost dressed in line. They are the bodies of Germans mown down in the onslaughts of March 9. They have fallen in front of the barbed wire. One could count them. Already their numbers are diminished. At night their comrades draw them into their lines by means of hooks or ropes.
The sun has left the rim of the earth and is speedily mounting the horizon. The morning is of an exquisite softness that contrasts strangely with the tragic scene. Behind me is chaos, in front a charnel-heap. Yet up above a lark is singing. His wings flap and his claws quiver, but he does not change his place in the rose-tinted heavens. I watch this sweet songster fluttering overhead, as if it were pecking at the light. A look-out man raises his eyes to catch sight of it. He looks at it tenderly for a moment, then resumes his watching. The passing shells do not disturb it in the slightest.
What is happening down there, among the corpses in green uniforms? One of them has made a movement; he glides through the grass like a snake. The enemy uses his dead as a screen or a blind, and is coming in this way to spy out the land. A look-out man has also observed this uncanny resurrection. He fires. Nothing moves. We must have been mistaken. A long time afterwards, a little below the suspected point, a body jumps up and abruptly disappears at a spot where the gradient is very steep and forms dead ground.