He
searched furiously, raging to himself again and again: "Oh! I must
find it! I must find it! I must find it!" His hands tore the wet
vegetables, were thick with the soil. Other things fell from his
pockets, Then the rain began to descend again, thin and cold. In some
building he could hear a horse moving, stamping. He pulled up the
vegetables by their roots in his search. As though a sword had struck
him his brain was clear. He knew of his loss. He flung himself on the
ground, rubbing the wet soil on to his face, whispering desperately:
"Oh God!--Oh God!--Oh God!"
On the day following we did not know of what had happened. Trenchard
was not with us, as he was sent about midday with some sanitars to
bury the dead in a wood five miles from M----. That must have been, in
many ways, the most terrible day of his life and during it, for the
first time, he was to know that unreality that comes to every one,
sooner or later, at the war. It is an unreality that is the more
terrible because it selects from reality details that cannot be
denied, selects them without transformation, saying to his victim:
"These things are as you have always seen them, therefore this world
is as you have always seen it.
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