Georges’s story is almost told, now; there remains only the end of his soldiering, which was to be eventful to the last. After following the fighting body for three days, the Twentieth Regiment was ordered into the first line.

The Germans, having now retreated to the Aisne, and eastward to the strategic positions long since prepared and mapped by German spies, had made a stand. So on toward Ville-sur-Tourbes Georges marched, the firing every moment getting hotter. They were evidently advancing against a very strong position, so that when they swung westward to the little village of Le Mesnil they began to be subjected to continuous shelling and to rifle fire that grew worse and worse. But still no enemy was in sight.

Again the Twentieth had to wait for the French artillery to arrive in front of a black wood that poured out destruction. Lying in the brush, Georges wondered whether it would all end as before. As before, each man waited for his time to come; but now, seasoned, hopeful, he could joke at death.

“There’s a marmite for you!” a corporal would sing out, as a German shell came screaming to the right; and, as the shrapnel exploded, “Look out for the prunes!” a man would yell, “they’re coming your way!” Georges was taking it all coolly enough, thinking, he told me, how much those hurtling shells sounded like a subway train rolling into a station—rather more like an express traveling past without stopping. And so, when a sergeant near him yelled, “Look out—here comes our portion!” he only laughed and ducked under the little shelter of brush and earth he had been building.