Then I saw more clearly--the face of an ordinary man, muffled in a comforter.
"It's a chap of the 150th, not the 129th," stammers a voice by my side.
We do not know, except that it is the end of the attacking wave.
When he has disappeared among the eddies, another follows him at a distance, and then another.

They pass by, separate and solitary, delegates of death, sacrificers and sacrificed.

Their great-coats fly wide; and we, we press close to each other in our corner of night; we push and hoist ourselves with our rusted muscles, to see that void and those great scattered soldiers.
We return to the shelter, which is plunged in darkness.

The motor-cyclist's voice obtrudes itself to the point that we think we can see his black armor.

He is describing the "carryings on" at Bordeaux in September, when the Government was there.