Each looked after himself, with hardly a thought for the next man.

On each side of the road were deserts without limits, flat and flabby, with trees like posts, and rusty fields patched with green mud.
"Shoulder packs, and forward!" Adjutant Marcassin ordered.
Where were we going?
No one knew.

We crossed the rest of the village.
The Germans had occupied it during the August retreat.

It was destroyed, and the destruction was beginning to live, to cover itself with fresh wreckage and dung, to smoke and consume itself.

The rain had ceased in melancholy.