Insurgent Mexico by John Reed

The steady noise of battle filled all the night. Ahead torches danced, rails clanged, sledges drummed on the spikes, the men of the repair gang shouted in the frenzy of their toil. It was after twelve. Since the trains had reached the beginning of the torn track we had made half a mile. Now and then a straggler from the main body came down the line of trains, shuffled into the light with his heavy Mauser awry across his shoulders, and faded into the darkness toward the debauch of sound in the direction of Gomez Palacio. The soldiers of our guard, squatting about their little fires in the fields, relaxed their tense expectancy; three of them were singing a little marching song, which began: I don't want to be a Porfirista,I don't want to be an Orozquista,But I want to be a volunteer in the army Maderista! Curious and excited, we hurried up and down the trains, asking people what they knew, what they thought. I had never heard a real killing-sound before, and it made me frantic with curiosity and nervousness. We were like dogs in a yard when a dog-fight is going on outside. Finally the spell snapped and I found myself desperately tired. I fell into a dead sleep on a little ledge under the lip of the cannon, where the laborers tossed their wrenches and sledge-hammers and crowbars when the train moved forward a hundred feet, and piled on themselves with shouts and horseplay.

In the coldness of before dawn I woke with the Colonel's hand on my shoulder. "You can go now," he said. "The sign is 'Zaragosa' and the countersign 'Guerrero. ' Our soldiers will be recognized by their hats pinned up in front. May you go well! "It was bitter cold. We threw our blankets around us, serape fashion, and trudged down past the fury of the repair gang as they hammered at it under the leaping flares-past the five armed men slouching around their fire on the frontier of the dark. "Are you off to the battle, compañeros? " cried one of the gang. "Look out for the bullets! " At that they all laughed. The sentries cried, "Adios! Don't kill them all! Leave a few pelones for us! "Beyond the last torch, where the torn track was wrenched and tumbled about on the uprooted roadbed, a shadowy figure waited for us. "Vamonos together," he said, peering at us. "In the dark three are an army. " We stumbled along over the broken track, silently, just able to make him out with our eyes. He was a little dumpy soldier with a rifle and a half-empty cartridge-belt over his breast. He said that he had just brought a wounded man from the front to the hospital train and was on his way back. "Feel this," he said, holding out his arm. It was drenched. We could see nothing. "Blood," he continued unemotionally. "His blood. He was my compadre in the Brigada Gonzales-Ortega. We went in this night down there and so many, so many -- we were cut in half. "It was the first we had heard, or thought, of wounded men. All of a sudden we heard the battle. It had been going on steadily all the time, but we had forgotten-the sound was so monstrous, so monotonous. Far rifle fire came like the ripping of strong canvas, the cannon shocked like pile-drivers. We were only six miles away now.