Something was coming toward them.
“Off the road,” Sterling commanded in a harsh whisper.
They scrabbled into the bushes as the disembodied sounds of many booted feet approached.
“Bloody hell,” Liggett muttered, “if it’s a fight they want, we’ll give it to them.”
“Quiet,” Morris whispered.
Out of the fog a column of men appeared. French infantry. A slackness pervaded their tattered ranks. The soldiers looked exhausted, covered with dust and dripping with sweat. Gloomy and silent, the procession passed by their hiding place.
Sterling called out a challenge and the ranks halted. They stared at the soldiers in the ditch, showing no hint of surprise. In halting French, Winston conversed with them. Then they shuffled onward.
“What news?” Sterling asked him.
“I’m not sure, Crown Sergeant,” Winston replied, a look of confusion on his face. “Apparently, a major offensive is about to begin in the Argonne trenches. But they’re not participating. They’re leaving this area.”
“Deserting,” Liggett snapped. “How do you like that?”
“No,” Winston countered, “that’s what doesn’t make sense. They said that they just had an encounter in a village up the road here. I couldn’t understand it though. My French is lacking. Something about the dead in the ground.”
“What do we do, Crown Sergeant?” William asked.
Sterling shrugged. Shouldered his knapsack. Slapped a fat fly from his cheek. “We move on.”
Edging along the fog enshrouded road, they encountered the sad dregs of a fleeing army. Soldiers and civilians passed by in disorder and panic; women carrying children in their arms and pushing them in small carriages; young girls in their Sunday best; boys and old men hefting all sorts of pointless artifacts of their safe life before the war. Soldiers slumped on peasant carts, gazing at nothing.
An infantryman galloped by on an officer’s horse. Spying them, he dismounted and threw his arms around the animal’s neck. He gasped something in French and then dashed off into the fields.
“What did he say?” asked Liggett.
“He thanked it for saving his life,” Winston replied.
“That’s an officer’s horse,” Sterling observed. “The fellow fled on his captain’s horse!”
Another soldier paused to speak to them.
“Ask him why it is he doesn’t have a rifle, knapsack, or equipment,” Sterling told Winston.
Winston listened to the soldier’s reply and then translated. “He says he lost them swimming across the Meuse.”
“Bollocks,” Liggett replied critically. “His clothes are dry! Here we are, fighting for their country, and they flee like schoolchildren!”
Darkness encircled them like a steel trap as they approached the village. The procession had trickled down to a few stragglers, the last of whom approached them through the dispersing mist. He bore the rank of officer and greeted them in English.
“Where are you going?” Sterling inquired. “We’re on our way to the Argonne forest. Do you know what’s happening there?”
“I wish only to be away from this cursed ground,” the Frenchman replied.
“But sir,” Sterling said, fighting hard to hide his exasperation, “why have you left your unit?”
“I am a company commander,” he stated proudly. Then he cast his eyes to the ground. “And my company’s only survivor.”
“But what the hell happened?” shouted Sterling.
“I can speak no more of this place. Let me by!”
The Frenchman brushed past them and William caught a brief glimpse of the tears streaking his grimy face. Then he vanished into the dark along with everyone else.
Face set with steely determination, Crown Sergeant Sterling motioned them onward. With the sounds of the battle drawing closer – the noise of death seemed to be carried further by the night – they entered the village.
Nothing remained save for a few crumbling walls. The five men walked slowly, rifles at the ready, their hearts hammering with fear. The road was paved with rubbish: linens and undergarments; litters of clothing; letters; burst mattresses and eiderdowns; fragments of furniture and shattered pottery.
And the dead lay everywhere.
Retching, William stumbled across five corpses in a tattered heap, all of them children, all of them hugging each other for comfort in death. Farther along lay a young mother and her two daughters, all dressed in their Sunday best, their faces forever frozen in an horrific visage.
Morris placed a comforting hand on William’s shoulder as the young man heaved into the dust.
“What do you think happened here?” William rasped.
“I don’tknow. They don’t seem burned or shot. Yetmosthave been—” The private’s answer was cut short by a piercing squeal from behind a ruined building, followed by a guttural grunt.
William jumped to his feet and dashed after Morris and Sterling.
Another squeal ended abruptly as a rifle echoed in the darkness.
They rounded the corner and halted in shock. In what had once been a courtyard, bodies had been stacked like cordwood, limbs flung out in deathly abandon. Pigs wandered through the pickings, feasting on human flesh.
Winston sighted and squeezed the trigger. A second bloated beast sagged to the ground, ignored by its brethren. Liggett was frantically reloading, his efforts punctuated with more swearing.
“Stand down,” ordered Sterling. “If there’re snipers about, you’ll bring them down on our heads!”
Liggett cursed again and brought the rifle up to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the nearest swine.
“Stand down, Corporal! That’s an order, Liggett!”
The shaken Corporal looked at them, and in the moonlight William noticed the tears of rage and bewilderment that streaked the dust on his face.
“This isn’t right,” Winston exclaimed. “It’s not natural!”
Sterling stepped forward to survey the makeshift abattoir. “I spent twenty years on the farm, lads,” he said quietly. “And I never saw pigs do this. They’ll eat most things, but . . .”
“Crown Sergeant,” called Morris. “Come and look at this!”
He was standing before a small mound of dirt. The men approached, wondering what new horror was about to be revealed. Slowly, they took their places next to Morris.
In the ground before them was a gaping hole. The yawning entrance led down into the earth, disappearing from sight. A peculiar smell wafted from the chasm. It reminded William of pig iron and summer storms.
“What do you make of this, then?”
“Artillery,” Winston answered, the word almost forming a question. “The Germans must have shelled the village.”
“No,” Sterling countered, “this was no explosion, we can all see that. This was dug. See that dirt? This tunnel was made from beneath the ground, not from above.”
“Well then what in bloody hell was it?” Liggett stammered.
“Something else. I don’t know what.”
“Perhaps the Germans have some new tunnelling machine,” William offered.
“There you go, thinking you’re bleeding Jules Verne again,” growled Liggett. “Pull your head out of yer arse, William!”
“Leave him alone,” Morris retorted and stepped toward the surly Corporal.
“Enough!” shouted Sterling, his voice echoing in the silent streets. “The Devil take you all, that’s enough! Whatever made this hole, whatever atrocity occurred in this village, we won’t solve anything by standing here. Let’s move on!”
Shaken, they departed from the village, stepping gingerly over the scattered corpses. The road wound on, cresting a hilltop a few kilometres away. Stealthily, they crept over the hill and looked down upon the valley of the Argonne Forest.
Away in the distance, the trees stood silent watch over the battlefield. The valley was a labyrinth of trenches, both German and Allied. To William, it looked as if ants had burrowed through the vast field, leaving no acre untouched. Ghostly fires dotted the landscape, as soldiers from both sides huddled in the mud while darkness closed upon them.