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A DAY AT DUN 105
Colonel Betz told off a non-commissioned officer to escort me
on my rambles through Dun.
First we crossed to the east side of the Meuse, where the
high road between Montmédy and Verdun runs through a
fine avenue. This road joins on to the main street of Dun,
in the northern half of M’hich the backs of the houses, wrecked
by shell fire, are reflected in the river as ruins and heaps of
debris. In the southern part of the same street the hospital
service has requisitioned those buildings that have been
spared by the shells. Here, too, we find a little garden, en-
closed by a fence, which is used as a mortuary, and to which
soldiers who have died in hospital are brought. Four dead
men were now lying on a grass plot in the shade of the trees.
They were dressed in their uniforms and had their caps on.
Wrapped in blankets and with a white cloth over the face,
they lay there waiting until there were enough of them to
be lowered in a batch into the big grave that was kept ready
in the churchyard. I went up to them and raised the cloths.
The features were cold and stiff, yet infinitely calm, and bore
no trace of the hard fate and severe suffering the dead had
undergone. I stopped in particular before a soldier who
" seemed to be resting from a game.
His aspect as undaunted as before,
But paler far."
He was a fine-looking fellow and his face seemed carved in
marble. He lay as in a deep and heavy sleep, with eyes and
lips closed, oblivious alike of the cannon’s roar and of ether
fumes, of fatherland and songs of victory. The soil of France
was receiving him in its embrace, and his relatives would
never bring wreaths to his grave.
Nevertheless, as we know, the fallen do not vanish without
a trace, since every soldier wears round his neck a little disc,
giving his regiment and his number. All that remains to be
done is to turn up the roll of his unit to find the dead man’s
name and home. In clearing the battlefield the discs are
collected, and with their help the lists of killed are drawn up.
A steep and narrow road leads up to the crest of the hills
that form the eastern boundary of the Meuse valley. On the
very edge of the slope stands the handsome and noble church
of Notre Dame de Bonne Garde, which dates from the time
of the Emperor Charles V. It is characteristic of this part
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