They said that his face as he stood up there and
cried aloud was as if it had been seen through a sheet of flame.
"They" were one or two out of the few who got back to the German lines.
Most of the Prussians stayed in the ploughed field. Karl Heinz's scream
had frozen the blood of the English soldiers, but it had also ruined
the major's plans. He and his men, caught all unready, clumsy with the
burdens that they carried, were shot to pieces; hardly a score of them
returned. The rest of the force were attended to by an English burying
party. According to custom the dead men were searched before they were
buried, and some singular relies of the campaign were found upon them,
but nothing so singular as Karl Heinz's diary.
He had been keeping it for some time. It began with entries about
bread and sausage and the ordinary incidents of the trenches; here
and there Karl wrote about an old grandfather, and a big china pipe,
and pinewoods and roast goose. Then the diarist seemed to get fidgety
about his health. Thus:
April 17.--Annoyed for some days by murmuring sounds in my head.
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