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The caldron in this pit of
war was being stirred up. Another wounded poilu was carried past us,
covered by a bloody blanket like the other one. From slimy sand-bags
and wet ruins came the sickening stench of human corruption. A boot
with some pulp inside protruded from a mud--bank where I stood, and
there was a human head, without eyes or nose, black, and rotting in
the puddle of a shell--hole. Those were relics of a battle on May 9th,
a year before, when swarms of boys, of the '16 class, boys of
eighteen, the flower of French youth, rushed forward from the
crossroads at La Targette, a few hundred yards away, to capture these
ruins of Neuville St.-Vaast. They captured them, and it cost them
seven thousand in killed and wounded--at least three thousand dead.
They fought like young demons through the flaming streets. They fell
in heaps under the German barrage-fire. Machine--guns cut them down as
though they were ripe corn under the sickle. But these French boys
broke the Prussian Guard that day.


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