At times,
they drove across fields from one plot of crosses to another, their
pneumatic tires crushing flat from the furrows opened by the plowman.
Tombs . . . tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming
over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their
quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the
dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The
soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the
restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated
across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible
onslaught which this earth had witnessed and from which it still felt
tragic shudderings.
"Dead . . . dead," murmured Chichi, following the rows of crosses
incessantly slipping past the sides of the automobile.
"O Lord, for them! . . . for their mothers," moaned Dona Luisa, renewing
her prayers.
Here had taken place the fiercest part of the battle--the fight in the
old way, man to man outside of the trenches, with bayonets, with guns,
with fists, with teeth.
The guide who was beginning to get his bearings was pointing out
the various points on the desolate horizon. There were the African
sharpshooters; further on, the chasseurs. The very large groups of
graves were where the light infantry had charged with their bayonets on
the sides of the road.
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