Chapter 17 - The Army Broke
William had been struck in the side.
Not by a musket ball, Mercer thought.
Possibly fragment or grazing shot.
There was blood.
Too much for my comfort.
Not too much for Mercer’s.
“Hold him.”
I did.
William opened his eyes.
“You again.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Did we win?”
“I think so.”
“Think?”
“I’m a journalist. Certainty costs extra.”
He laughed and immediately regretted it.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“Then stop being amusing.”
Mercer worked.
Outside, the French army collapsed.
We could hear Allied cheers.
Prussian pursuit.
Cannon farther south.
Men running.
Wagons.
Horses.
The sound of an army becoming a crowd.
William gripped my wrist.
“Boots.”
“What?”
“Still wet.”
I laughed.
Then I cried.
I hid it badly.
“You’re very emotional,” he murmured.
“You’re very annoying.”
Mercer looked up.
“He will probably live.”
Probably.
My favorite word in Belgium.
Night fell.
The battlefield did not become quiet.
Not immediately.
Pursuit continued south.
Prussians chased French troops along roads.
Broken vehicles blocked routes.
Abandoned guns remained in fields.
Men wandered searching for units.
Others searched for friends.
Some simply sat.
Victory did not look the way paintings later showed it.
Nobody around me raised a sword toward sunset.
Nobody looked clean.
Men who had survived stared as though uncertain what survival required next.
I went outside.
The ridge was covered with debris.
Muskets.
Packs.
Hats.
Paper.
Broken wheels.
Dead horses.
Things once belonging to people.
I stood where I had watched breakfast that morning.
It felt like years earlier.
Mercer joined me.
“We won,” I said.
“So it appears.”
“You don’t sound pleased.”
He looked over the field.
“Ask me tomorrow.”
That night I slept sitting against a wall.
Before closing my eyes, I wrote one sentence:
Napoleon lost Waterloo today, but I cannot yet tell you who won it.
May you like
I meant the sentence as philosophy.
By morning, it felt literal.
