The red puddles about them were covered with flies; ants
were crawling over their faces. I felt a kind of sickness and turned
away.
What was left of my regiment formed in fours to join the
advancing column. Horses were galloping riderless, rein and
stirrup flying, some horribly wounded. One hobbled near me, a
front leg gone at the knee.
Shells were flying overhead; cannonballs were ricocheting over the
level valley, throwing turf in the air, tossing the dead and wounded
that lay thick and helpless.
Some were crumpled like a rag, as if the pain of death had
withered them in their clothes; some swollen to the girth of horses;
some bent backward, with arms outreaching like one trying an odd
trick, some lay as if listening eagerly, an ear close to the ground;
some like a sleeper, their heads upon their arms; one shrieked
loudly, gesturing with bloody hands, 'Lord God Almighty, have
mercy on me!
I had come suddenly to a new world, where the lives of men were
cheaper than blind puppies. I was a new sort of creature, and
reckless of what came, careless of all I saw and heard.
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