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that in another half hour that whole two kilometres of compact, living, human, vulnerable flesh would be well within range of the German guns. The thought appalled him; it also prevented the saliva from forming in his mouth.
    â€œFlesh, bodies, nerves, legs, testicles, brains, arms, intestines, eyes . . .” He could feel the mass of it, the weight of it, pushing forward, piling up on his defenceless shoulders, overwhelming him with an hallucination of fantastic butchery. A point of something formed in his stomach, then began to spread and rise slowly. It reached a level near his diaphragm where it became stationary and seemed to embed itself. He could not dislodge it or budge it up or down, but he recognized it for what it was: the nausea induced by intense fear.
    â€œThree thousand men. My men. To run the gauntlet of open, registered roads with three thousand men. All neatly packeted for the slaughter. It’s too much for one man to bear. I can’t give the order to space out now or they’d know I’m in a funk. They’re quick to sense it when an officer has the wind up. At any moment . . . This strain is intolerable. What an awful racket they make. Where the devil are those guides going to meet us? I’d look like a fool arriving with the regiment in single file, all spaced out. Think of it, I can’t order the fire-zone intervals yet because it wouldn’t look right. What a relief it would be though . . . Keep up appearances, no matter how many lives it costs. What torture this is, and that fool Vignon strolling along as if he’s on a boulevard. Good old Vignon! Why can’t I have some of his . . . Three thousand men, two kilometres of massed flesh. What a target! What’s that light over there? . . .”
    His imagination suddenly side-slipped, then righted itself in front of another mirage. He saw, way over there across the lines, German gunners, grotesquely helmeted figures, moving in quiet efficiency around their guns. He saw them ramming shells and charges home and closing the breeches, reading gauges, twirling wheels. He saw the great cannon, mouths still smoking from the previous salvo, rising, slow and erectile, until their muzzles were pointing at just the right spot in the sky. He saw the gun crews step down and away and put their hands to their ears, all except one man to each gun who was clutching a lanyard. He saw the officer raise a whistle to his lips. He saw all of them bow their heads a little and turn half away. He saw the lanyards go suddenly taut, looking as if they had jerked the guns backwards, so instantaneous was the explosion and recoil.
    â€œFlesh, bodies, nerves, legs . . .” Things were getting all mixed up in his mind. It seemed to be filled with flesh, cloyed with the sweetish smell of flesh that is torn open and over which blood is pouring. It was his flesh, their flesh, lying about still alive, but dying, dying so slowly, dying so fast . . .
    â€œMarching, marching, marching. Slowly, as in a dream. Slow march, funeral march . . .
    â€œThe naked road. The hard-surfaced road. The ditch too shallow to shelter even a rabbit from the whizzing, centrifugal metal . . .
    â€œThe neat, fatally compact mass on the fatally neat road, so neatly marked on the map . . .
    â€œThe neat German captain in his compact dugout. His fatally neat figures, the fatally neat co-ordinates of the naked road . . .
    â€œThe lanyards going suddenly taut, looking as if they had jerked the huge guns backwards . . .
    â€œThe rush of terrifying sound . . .
    â€œTwo kilometres of compact, living, human, vulnerable flesh behind him. Three thousand men paralyzed in their tracks . . .
    â€œThe blinding flashes of the detonations . . .
    â€œWhizzing, centrifugal metal . . .
    â€œShambles . . .
    â€œAnd then smoke, billowing, acrid smoke, settling slowly . . .”
    The hallucinations reeled in his head, then fell to pieces as words broke in and shattered