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It was not comely now.
Peering into the wagon we saw that the dead man's face had been partly
shot or shorn away--the lower jaw was gone; so that it had become an
abominable thing to look on. These two had been men the day before. Now
they were carrion and would be treated as such; for as we looked back we
saw the wagon turn off the high road into a field where the wild red
poppies, like blobs of red blood, grew thick between rows of neglected
sugar beets.
We stopped and watched. The wagon bumped through the beet patch to
where, at the edge of a thicket, a trench had been dug. The diggers
were two peasants in blouses, who stood alongside the ridge of raw
upturned earth at the edge of the hole, in the attitude of figures in a
painting by Millet. Their spades were speared upright into the mound of
fresh earth. Behind them a stenciling of poplars rose against the sky
line.
We saw the bodies lifted out of the wagon. We saw them slide into the
shallow grave, and saw the two diggers start at their task of filling in
the hole.


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