Also there were fires
raging. Smoke was pouring thickly out of the mouth of the tunnel. It
didn't seem possible that there could be anyone alive back yonder.
"All of a sudden, men began to come out of the tunnel. They came and
came until there were nearly two hundred of them--French reservists
mostly. They were crazy men--crazy for the time being, and still crazy,
I expect, some of them. They came out staggering, choking, falling down
and getting up again. You see, their nerves were gone. The fumes, the
gases, the shock, the fire, what they had endured and what they had
escaped--all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept,
laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously
until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see
but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled
off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his
bare feet until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. I don't care to
see anything like that again--even if it is my enemies that suffer it.
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