Friday, August 28th.

Four o'clock in the morning. We ascend to the top of a stony road. The night mists are still drifting. The whole regiment falls in near the village, in an orchard bounded by hedges. And there a monocled major in a sing-song voice reads aloud a stirring proclamation: it is the Colonel's funeral oration, filled with vehement exhortations, and a poem of DÉroulÈde's to finish up with. Much simpler and more touching is the sight of the soldiers presenting arms, and all the officers with their swords at the salute.

On the summit of a wind-swept crest, we dig trenches deep enough to accommodate men standing erect. I inhale the fresh air greedily, delighted to be out in the sunshine and happy, while my men dig away with their picks and throw shovelfuls of earth over the parapet.

An immense valley lies extended below us. At the foot of the hill are deeply shadowed woods interspersed with luminous lakes of well-mellowed crops. To the right, a road takes an abrupt turn and leads through an avenue of trees; in the foreground, a second road at right angles to the first, cuts an ugly gash through the dappled richness of the fields. At the bottom of the valley, the white walls of the village of Dannevoux peeps forth between the green leaves. And still further away, over towards the Meuse, invisible from this spot, is a chain of blue hills.

Until evening, the men dig with zest. From afar off sounds the muffled rumble of a violent cannonade. We take our lunch by the roadside, attacking a charred fowl with teeth and fingers, and drinking muddy wine to the last dregs. To-night, as yesterday, I gratefully retire with my farmer; but on this occasion his snores haunt me, and he wakes me every time he moves.

Saturday, August 29th.

The men, with shirts opened and their skins wet with perspiration, complete their trenches beneath a searching and pitiless sun. Above the rumbling of distant artillery, we hear the detonations, still muffled and deadened, of nearer batteries. By holding my hand to my ear, I can distinguish soft whistlings which terminate in wailing explosions. Shrapnel evidently, the smoke of which is slowly dissipated in the calm air.

We retain our billets that night also, but not many of us sleep; for the German shells are bursting now hardly a mile away from the village; the windows shake and tremble under the stress of the formidable explosions.

Sunday, August 30th.

Bois de Septsarges. Hardy undergrowth thrusting forth roots shoots amid the shadows of the great forest. Great splashes of light are on the moss; living, quivering sun-rays pierce the warm gloom; the acrid odour of fermentation, increased by the sun, is oppressive. It strikes one forcibly, that sun! I recline in the shelter of a tree, moving only as the shade moves.

P——, a second-lieutenant of the 8th, lies weltering beside me. He is writing in pencil a long letter to his wife; he chats about her and his little girl, who is five months old. I pay him all the attention I possibly can, but I fear I do not understand much of what he says: his voice comes to me like a monotonous purring—which is, as it were, punctuated by the throbbing of the blood in my temples and fingers. And so I fall asleep.

A terrific explosion wakes me with a start. Three more successive detonations shatter the air, and above my head I hear the flight of shells—a light rustling, a rapid rushing, which one can with some difficulty follow with the ear, growing more and more distant until it terminates finally in the explosion.

"Those are 120 mm. guns," P—— remarks to me.

Scarcely have the words crossed his lips before a succession of harsher and more violent explosions causes me to look away to the left. There is no hanging back for each other with these! They come altogether in a rush, yet each detonation is separately distinguishable, despite the deep murmur following the resounding, vibrating echo which steals through the undergrowth. I think a battery of our 75's must have urgent work on hand.

By the evening, the cannonade has become far heavier. The whistling shells pass and cross each other's course; the smaller ones furiously maintaining a flat trajectory; the bigger ones sailing past almost slowly, winging through the air with well-nigh dulcet tones. Quite mechanically I raise my eyes to watch them. Every man hearing that noise for the first time, does the same thing.

When we leave the wood these "marmites" are bursting away to our left, near enough for us to hear, after the explosion, the hail of splinters striking the trees.

We remain in our billets as wakeful as on the preceding night, and this is to be my last night with my fat old man. Alas!

Monday, August 31st.

We set out for the Septsarges Wood again. The day is passed as was the preceding one. Grillon, a regimental barber, shaves me: a sensation which has already become strange to me. Two knapsacks for a stool, a tree for a backrest. I pay him with superfine tobacco, and he would have kissed me! I settle down again for a siesta, chasing the shade.

Towards two o'clock we make a fresh move. We push forward in a north-easterly direction, traversing the whole length of the wood until we reach trenches constructed by the engineers with a breastwork of tree-trunks in front. We take possession of them. A shelter made of branches is reserved for my occupation a little behind the line.

It would hardly have been natural had we not, in the course of our day's wanderings, received a few big Berthas—ten or so exploded in succession not thirty yards from us.

I passed the night in my bower. The branches of which it was constructed had become sun-dried and reminded me of the fact by affectionately digging me in the sides. My improvised mattress would not shake down properly, while the knapsack beneath my head acquired a sudden and spiteful hardness. I was not yet used to it.

Tuesday, September 1st.

We remain in the trenches. Some belated food is eagerly expected from the kitchen. Very shortly, however, the inevitable complete confusion descends upon us. For the fight is moving along to our front. The Captain has sent word to say that the first line must have been broken through and that we must redouble our vigilance. Porchon, my Saint Cyrien, acting on orders, sends out a patrol away to the left. Hardly have they got clear when rifle shots ring out—we know well Lebels are speaking!—and the patrol tumbles back, scared. It appears they sighted the Boches and fired! My men become restless and anxious; there is a premonition of evil in the air.

Suddenly a shrill whistling bursts out and increases, increases … until two shrapnel shells explode almost above my trench. I am down on the ground in a moment; and even in the act my attention is attracted and held by the terrified expression of one of the men. The memory of that man's face haunts me now!

Once again a messenger comes up at a run:

"The Captain sends me to warn you that there is nothing now between you and the Germans!"

Is it true? We have seen the wounded coming down … (Censored) … A corporal of the 27th, stained and perspiring, his face expressive of his agitation, calls out to inform me that Dalle-Leblane has a bullet through his stomach. Then a great tall fellow, shot through the thighs, goes by groaning. He raises both feet, resting the whole weight of his body on those supporting him. Good comrades those, and true heroes! They carefully set down the wounded man about ten yards from my trench and, having ridded themselves of their burden, make off. So it remains for me to have the man transported, still bellowing, to the battalion first-aid post.

The news reaches me, I know not by what means, that the —th are retiring, mainly on their left. It turns out to be true, for they come to relieve us, and we move back to new positions, five hundred yards to the rear.

Line in sections of fours, in a clearing. The shells begin to burst around us. At the very first explosion, a reservist, a big man, fair and ruddy, turns round sharply to tell me he is wounded. He is pale and trembling violently. I discover that he has been pricked by a thorn as he was bending down!

A second shell, and a street hawker from Ferral is grasping a bleeding wrist. A third: Corporal Tremoult receives the end of someone else's rifle full in the mouth. For a moment he is dismayed; then, his spirit returning, he commences to swear to the point of extinction. This peppering continues.

Night. From afar sound the moans of the wounded. A mutilated horse whinnies in pain. Also there comes to my ears a strange and poignant lamentation—perhaps it is only the cry of a nightbird!

I make the round at eleven o'clock, crippled by the cold. Half an hour has passed since I called Porchon, but I am not yet asleep when the order for our withdrawal arrives. We return to the trenches at Cuisy.

Wednesday, September 2nd.

We have been here since two o'clock, and settle ourselves down with a curious sense of security and protection. Have they, the Boches, crossed the Meuse in number? Maybe! But, perched on the top of this elevation, we can await them tranquilly. Four days ago a machine-gunner came down to us with a range-finder and supplied me with exact ranges. Should they come, I shall be able to regulate our fire and we shall drive them down before they reach us.

Meanwhile we sleep. The stars are limpid and steady; the air freshens with the approach of day. Crouching right at the bottom of the trench on a bed of dry lucerne, I wrap myself tightly in my greatcoat and doze a little, a doze constantly broken by chill awakings. At last my men, moving about me, succeed in rousing me. I rub my eyes, stretch my arms, and jump to my feet. The sun is rising and already floods the fields with a sea of soft light. I recognize my valley, with the range-points marked to the extreme limits of effective fire.

Many aeroplanes are up—ours bright and light, those of the Boches dark and sinister, but all of them dainty and with the calm unswerving flight of birds of prey.

One or two patrols of grey dragoons are scouting in a field of rye. A few shots coming from the right of us stop them. Before us at the edge of a wood is a vedette of Uhlans, horses and men quite motionless, except when, every now and again, one of the horses, fly-pestered, flicks its flanks with its tail.

Through my glasses, I distinguish two wounded men dragging themselves along a road—two Frenchmen. One of the Uhlans has also seen them. He has dismounted and is moving towards them. I follow the scene with concentrated attention. Now he is close to them and addresses them; then all three commence to move towards a thicket bordering the roadway, the German between the two Frenchmen, supporting them, without doubt encouraging them with words. And there, taking many precautions, the big, grey horseman helps our men to stretch themselves at ease. He leans over them and it is long before he rises; I am sure he is dressing their wounds!…

At two o'clock the shells come whistling over us again. A battery on the crest behind us has opened fire. The firing has endured for perhaps ten minutes or so, when suddenly a German shell bursts not ten yards in front of our trench. Quite automatically I raised my head the second following the explosion—and an invisible something passed growling beneath my very nose. A man near me says laughingly:

"Mind the hornets!…"

I have learnt a lesson. Good! The next time I won't get up before the swarm has passed.

I have not long to wait. Four shells arrive at the same moment, then three more, then ten. This continues for almost an hour. We are all prone at the bottom of the trench, our bodies in the mud, our heads beneath our knapsacks. Between each outbreak of the tempest, the two men to the right of me labour feverishly to dig a niche for themselves in the trench side. They scratch away like a fox in the earth; I can see no more of them than the nails in their boots.

A dark, fantastically shaped, copper-coloured cloud of smoke, irritating throat and lungs, steals down upon us. It has not had time to clear before a fresh storm bursts. One can hear it approaching, irresistible; I feel the terrible shock as the first shell strikes the ground, before being deafened by the succeeding salvo.

During an interval of comparative calm, a noise of someone scrambling and sliding makes me quickly turn my head. One of my men has jumped out of the trench to the left and is running along the front of it towards the right, knapsack on back and rifle in hand, bayonet clinking, mess-tin rattling, cartridges shaking! The water-bottle on his hip beats a violent tattoo. He glares at me with eyes wild and dilated, and then hurls himself bodily back into the trench. Like a thunderbolt he falls right on top of his comrades before they can find time to jump aside. Much shouting and swearing ensues, punctuated by blows. A sudden squall of half a dozen high explosives serves, however, to restore peace among them. The shells fall uncomfortably near us, one indeed not more than five yards from me. For a moment it seemed as if the walls of earth had closed in upon me; a stone, several pounds in weight, catches me fair and square in the knapsack, driving my nose deeply into the clay and leaving me dazed for quite ten minutes.

The sunset is beautiful and soothing. Night falls clear and still. I walk up and down before the trench in a field of lucerne, stopping at the edges of the enormous craters dug by the shells, picking up here and there steel splinters, still warm, or copper fuses almost intact on which are inscribed numbers and abbreviated words. And then I return "home" and stretch myself out on the earth to sleep.