What a week! Among the rear-guard of the German army which flowed on like a river, dropping with sleep and weariness, again and again aimed at by the patrols, by day and by night I carted human flesh. Dead, and more dead, dead men of all sorts, those who had been killed instantly in the heat of action, those who had bled to death from their wounds, men who, after being wounded, had been finished off by the scouts, had been shot at close range when they were asking for water or were endeavouring to keep themselves alive by eating lucerne; then there were the half dead, men shot through the head, men whose chests had been riddled; men shot through the groin. When I looked at these disfigured and groaning masses of flesh, it seemed to me as if my nerves were being scraped. The rest of the wounded found their way in unaided, running, limping, dragging themselves along, helping themselves with a stick, crawling on all fours. It was appalling. I saw an infantryman who had been shot through the chest and who had walked alone for a league, holding a white flag. He had lost almost all the blood in his body. I do not know by what miraculous strength of will he kept going. When he reached the field hospital he said: “I waited four days for some one to come. I am thirsty. I feel better, but I am thirsty.” He smiled. He was beautiful, this young man, like a waxen St. Sebastian. Then, without a word more, he fell dead. I had been assigned to the tent where those most dangerously wounded were brought. There were about forty of them, upon a thin layer of straw, and some even on the bare ground. The place swarmed with flies, and it stank of dejecta and of dead bodies. When the sun was high, the heat was stifling. In the evening, the patients’ teeth chattered with cold. Some of them were lads of the 20th corps, men with the colours when the war broke out, all Parisians, of simple and engaging courage, and able to take an interest in their bedfellows. There were men from Provence, the pain of whose wounds forced tears from their eyes, and who confided to me their amours as they might have done to a sister. When the pain was at its worst, they all cried out: “Maman!” It was heartrending.