On both sides, as far as eye could reach, ranks of grey
officers and soldiers were wretchedly soaking in the rain. Water was
dripping from their sullen faces and it looked as though they were all
weeping over their fate--the fate which had cast them upon this
strange, unknown, God-forsaken field. In a few hours many of them will
perhaps be lying dead amidst the half-rotted potato stems on the wet
soil with their pallid faces upturned to the cold heavens, the very
ones which now weep also over their dear, distant country.
Behind, a battery crew was vainly attempting to set the cannon which
were sinking into the soaked plough-land. One could hear the hoarse
angry voices, the cracking of whips, and the heavy, strained snorting
of horses. In front of them lone officers wandered in drenched cloaks
in the rain; still farther behind the curtain of rain and the thick
fog there rumbled cannons and it was impossible to tell whether they
belonged to the enemy or not. At times the shooting seemed to come
from afar-off on the right.
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