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Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury), 1876-1944

"Paths of Glory Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front"

Suddenly out of the blur of the lens there sprang
up in front of me, seemingly quite close, a zigzagging toy trench cut in
the face of a little hillock. This trench was full of gray figures of
the size of very small dolls. They were moving aimlessly back and
forth, it seemed to me, doing nothing at all.
Then I saw another trench that ran slantwise up the hillock and it
contained more of the pygmies. A number of these pygmies came out of
their trench--I could see them quite plainly, clambering up the steep
wall of it--and they moved, very slowly it would seem, toward the
crosswise trench on ahead a bit. To reach it they had to cross a
sloping green patch of cleared land. So far as I might tell no
explosive or shrapnel shower fell into them or near them, but when they
had gone perhaps a third of the distance across the green patch there
was a quick scatteration of their inch-high figures. Quite distinctly I
counted three manikins who instantly fell down flat and two others who
went ahead a little way deliberately, and then lay down.


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