Presently, when the shadows were thickening into gloom and the angelus
bells were ringing in the church, I heard, a long way off, the rattle of
the rifles as the soldiers fired goodnight volleys over the graves of
their dead comrades.
On the next day, at Hirson, which was another of our stopping points on
the journey to the front, we saw the joint funeral of seven men leaving
the hospital where they had died during the preceding twelve hours, and
I shan't forget that picture either. There was a vista bounded by a
stretch of one of those unutterably bleak backways of a small and shabby
French town. The rutted street twisted along between small gray plaster
houses, with ugly, unnecessary gable-ends, which faced the road at wrong
angles. Small groups of towns-people stood against the walls to watch.
There was also a handful of idling soldiers who watched from the gateway
of the house where they were billeted.
Seven times the bearers entered the hospital door, and each time as they
reappeared, bringing one of the narrow, gaudy, yellow boxes, the
officers lined up at the door would salute and the soldiers in double
lines at the opposite side of the road would present arms, and then, as
the box was lifted upon the wagon waiting to receive it, would smash
their guns down on the bouldered road with a crash.
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