A few days later we are sent to evacuate a village.
On the way we meet the fleeing inhabitants trundling their goods and chattels along with them in wheelbarrows, in perambulators, and on their backs.
Their figures are bent, their faces full of grief, despair, haste, and resignation.
The children hold on to their mothers' hands, and often an older girl leads the little ones who stumble onward and are for ever looking back.
A few carry miserable-looking dolls.
All are silent as they pass us by.
We are marching in column; the French certainly will not fire on a town in which there are still inhabitants.
But a few minutes later the air screams, the earth heaves, cries ring out; a shell has landed among our rear squad.
We scatter and fling ourselves down on the ground, but at that moment I feel the instinctive alertness leave me which hitherto has always made me do unconsciously the right thing under fire; the thought leaps up with a terrible throttling fear:
"You are lost"—and the next moment a blow sweeps like a whip over my left leg.
I hear Albert cry out; he is beside me.
"Quick, up, Albert!" I yell, for we are lying unsheltered in the open field.
He staggers up and runs.
I keep beside him.
We have to get over a hedge; it is higher than we are.
Kropp seizes a branch, 1 heave him up by the leg, he cries out, I give him a swing and he flies over.
With one bound 1 follow him and fall into a ditch that lies behind the hedge.
Our faces are smothered with duck-weed and mud, but the cover is good.
So we wade in up to our necks.
Whenever a shell whistles we duck our heads under the water.
After we have done this a dozen times, I am exhausted.
"Let's get away, or I'll fall in and drown," groans Albert.
"Where has it got you?" I ask him.
"In the knee I think."
"Can you run?"
"I think–––"
"Then out!"
We make for the ditch beside the road, and stooping, run along it.
The shelling follows us.
The road leads towards the munition dump.
If that goes up there won't be so much as a boot-lace left of us.
So we change our plan and run diagonally across country.
Albert begins to drag.
"You go, I’ll come on after," he says, and throws himself down.
I seize him by the arm and shake him.
"Up, Albert, if once you lie down you'll never get any farther.
Quick, I'll hold you up."
At last we reach a small dug-out.
Kropp pitches in and I bandage him up.
The shot is just a little above his knee.
Then I take a look at myself.
My trousers are bloody and my arm, too.
Albert binds up my wounds with his field dressing.
Already he is no longer able to move his leg, and we both wonder how we managed to get this far.
Fear alone made it possible; we should have run even if our feet had been shot off;—we would have run on the stumps.
I can still crawl a little.
I call out to a passing ambulance wagon which picks us up.
It is full of wounded.
There is an army medical lance-corporal with it who sticks an anti-tetanus needle into our chests.
At the dressing station we arrange matters so that we lie side by side.