Suddenly he raised his head with a
jerk. A new smell struck him, a sweetish stench which kept getting
stronger and stronger until at a curve of the trench wall, which swung
off to the left at this point and receded semicircularly, it burst upon
him like a great cloud. He looked about, shaken by nausea, his gorge
rising. In a dip in the trench he saw a pile of dirty, tattered uniforms
heaped in layers and with strangely rigid outlines. It took him some
time to grasp the full horror of that which towered in front of him.
Fallen soldiers were lying there like gathered logs, in the contorted
shapes of the last death agony. Tent flaps had been spread over them,
but had slipped down and revealed the grim, stony grey caricatures, the
fallen jaws, the staring eyes. The arms of those in the top tier hung
earthward like parts of a trellis, and grasped at the faces of those
lying below, and were already sown with the livid splotches of
corruption.
Captain Marschner uttered a short, belching cry and reeled forward. His
head shook as though loosened from his neck, and his knees gave way so
that he already saw the ground rising up toward him, when suddenly an
unknown face emerged directly in front of him and attracted his
attention, and gave him back his self-control. It was a sergeant, who
was staring at him silently with great, fevered, gleaming eyes in a
deathly pale face.
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