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diverting onto a secondary track.
    The train moved forward for another five minutes, and then stopped. Two officers had jumped down from one of the front cars and were walking back. Laus and two other noncoms went out to meet them. They conferred for a moment but didn't tell us anything. All along the train people were looking out. The forest seemed a likely haven for terrorists. Our train had been standing still for several minutes when we heard the distant sound of wheels. We were walking up and down trying to warm ourselves up when a blast from a whistle accompanied by gestures indicated that we should return to our posts at once. A locomotive appeared in the distance on the track we had just left; it was entirely blacked out.           ,
    What I saw next froze me with horror. I wish I were a writer of genius so that I could do justice to the vision which appeared before us. First we saw a car loaded with railway materials, pushed along in front of the locomotive and hiding its dim lights. Then came the smoking locomotive, its tender, and a closed car with a hole in its roof to accommodate a short length of smoking pipe-probably the train kitchen. Behind this another car with high railings carried armed German soldiers. A twin-mounted machine gun covered the rest of the train, which consisted simply of open flatcars like ours, but loaded with a very different kind of freight. The first one of these to pass my uncomprehending eyes seemed to be carrying a confused heap of objects, which only gradually became recognizable as human bodies. Directly behind this heap other people were clinging together, crouching or standing. Each car was full to the bursting point. One of us, more informed than the others, told us in two words what we were looking at: "Russian prisoners."
    I thought I had recognized the brown coats I had seen once before, near the castle, but it was really too dark to be sure. Hals looked at me. Except for the burning red spots made by the cold, his face was as white as a sheet.
    "Did you see that?" he whispered. "They've piled up their dead to shield themselves from the wind."
    In my stupefaction I could only reply with something like a groan. Every car was carrying a shield of human bodies. I stood as if petrified by the horror of the sight rolling slowly by: faces entirely drained of blood, and bare feet stiffened by death and cold.
    The tenth car had just passed us when something even more horrible happened. Four or five bodies slid from the badly balanced load and fell to the side of the track. The funereal train didn't stop. A group of officers and noncoms from our train walked over to investigate. Driven by I don't know what element of curiosity I jumped down from our car and went over to the officers. I saluted and asked in a faltering voice if the men were dead. An officer looked at me in astonishment and I realized that I had just abandoned my post. He must have noticed my confusion, as he didn't reprimand me.
    "I think so," he said sadly. "You can help your comrades bury them." Then he turned and walked away. Hals had come with me. We went back to our car to fetch shovels and began to dig a trench a short distance above the embankment. Laus and another fellow looked through the dead men's clothes to try to find some identification. I learned later that most of these poor devils had no civilian identity. Hals and I needed all our nerve to drag two of them over to the ditch without looking at them. We were covering them with dirt when the departure whistle blew. It was growing colder by the minute. I felt overcome by a vast sense of disgust.
    An hour later our train passed through a double hedge of structures which, despite the absence of light, we could see were more or less destroyed. We passed another train, less sinister than the preceding one, but scarcely comforting. Its cars were marked with red crosses. Through some of the windows we could see stretchers, which must have been carrying