Friday, September 25th.

Where are we? Mouilly should be over there to the right opposite the woods. I find that we have passed the last hours of the night on a plateau stretching far away behind us, sterile, and half swallowed by the forest. Before us, on the other side of the road, there are a few fields, a dip, then more forest. Towards the west is Mouilly, Rupt, the valley of the Meuse, all calm with that peace which reigns far away from the enemy. Towards the east, beyond the wood, is the last of the "Heights of the Meuse," the final barrier before the plain which they command; then the marshy WoËvre, Fresnes, Marcheville, Sceaux, Champlon. Away over there somewhere are the Germans forming a human carpet at the foot of the hills, waiting a favourable moment to rush down again to the attack. They have gone south too, and captured Hattenchatel, Saint Maurice; their line runs right through the undergrowth between the old forest trees. They hold Saint Remy, Vaux-les-Palameix. Yesterday they advanced almost to the road from Saint Remy to Mouilly. Where are they this morning? And what is to be our rÔle? We have not been told a word.

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? We are ordered: "Go there." We go there. We are commanded: "Attack." We attack. At least during the battle, we know we are fighting; we know what our immediate mission is, and knowing it, accomplish it with a better heart. But before? And afterwards? Often it is only the sound of firing close at hand or an avalanche of shells which heralds the fray.

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This morning the men keep constantly on the move, trotting up and down the road, hands in their pockets, tramping and stamping to restore the circulation to their frozen feet. Their moving silhouettes can be seen at a great distance, but I do not interfere. It is very cold to-day and, besides, the Boches were thrust back several miles yesterday evening; between us and them lie dense woods which cut off their view.

There is a certain gaiety and verve animating all this brisk movement in the fresh morning air.

Very soon the men gather in circles on the grass and loud bursts of laughter interrupt their conversation. Naturally, the incidents of the last fight are canvassed and, as always, when danger is no longer close at hand, made to appear a mere joke.

Yesterday's bullets were erratic and achieved fantastic results. A corporal exhibits his pocketbook split right across, the papers in which have been cut in two.

"When that bullet gently tapped me," he says, "I firmly believed I was done. My heart actually ceased to beat. As I found myself still standing upright, however, I began to examine myself. I found the hole with the pocket-book behind it. LÀ! LÀ! What an achievement! Quite a beautiful bit of work. But the one who got it worst, was my old woman—cut clean in two!"

From the mass of papers he draws forth a woman's photograph, displaying a long tear. Then laughs and loud-voiced pleasantries ring out:

"You are a nice sort of chap, my buck! To let your old woman take the knocks to save your own skin!"

"My boy, who can blame him? She's no further use to him!"

"Tell me, then! Seeing that it was a Boche that made the mess, doesn't it make you hot?"

The corporal, replacing the photograph in his pocket-book, replies:

"You shut up! The model of that photograph is safe enough. I can trust her a bit more than I can trust myself. Understand?"

A second man passes around two cartridges which a German bullet cut in two. Another voice says:

"It is the lieutenant that had the luck. I have seen his coat; I can't understand it at all."

A little while earlier I had shown Porchon my "wound." He agreed that I now held the record for what he called "the death graze." Fifteen days ago, during a night attack, he had the advantage over me. On the morning of the 9th, while we were crossing the open to occupy our positions as advance posts, a bullet had struck him in the left side, passed through his bag, cutting through a tin of meat, and finally slipped down his leg. He had recovered it from the top of his boot. Later, in the middle of the fight, seeing a soldier running through the darkness towards the rear of our lines, he had seized him roughly by the arm, crying:

"Right about face at once."

At which the other, a big, helmeted brute, had jumped back, raising his bayonet. And most undoubtedly that Boche would have spitted Porchon, whose revolver was empty, had not Courret, a corporal of the company, brought the man down with a shot fired at point-blank range.

The sun, already high, gently warms the plateau. Towards ten o'clock, the cooks appear from the ravine behind us, where they have more cover from enemy eyes. They move along placidly, carrying buckets and cans, or piles of plates suspended from poles slung between them.

"Shall we eat now with the men?" I asked Porchon.

"Not for me," he replied. "The cyclist is foraging for us as well as for the captain. He has promised to bring up his loot as soon as he can."

We wait an hour, two hours, our stomachs protesting, never moving our eyes from the ravine where the rest of the battalion is resting beside the fires. Down there is our portion of beef, rice and soup, which is so comforting when swallowed hot. It is so near, scarcely a mile away; and yet so far, since we have been stationed at the side of this road and dare not move.

"When I think," groans Porchon, "that that animal of a cyclist may at this very moment be snoring in the shadow of the trees, lying on the soft moss, his stomach well filled, and his conscience at ease…."

"The cyclist," I interrupt him, "is an inferior beast, but if you had only followed my advice a short while ago, we now should also have our stomachs well filled; and the cyclist would still remain in our eyes an admirable, serviceable and dependable man, as he was this morning before this question of food arose…."

"Rub it in!" snaps Porchon. "I agree that I was a fool and that is enough. Now please leave me in peace with the memory of that pot of honey I obtained at Rupt, of which you, chuckling with concupiscence, gorged at least a half, the other night before Saint Remy, notwithstanding the fact that the bodies in the ditches were smelling sufficiently vilely to destroy the appetite of any normal respectable being."

At this moment, M——, the old volunteer from California, approaches, cap in hand. In tones deliberate and grave, pronouncing each syllable distinctly and meticulously, he says:

"I beg the lieutenants to pardon me. I could not, however, help overhearing a few words of your conversation, and I gather you have had nothing to eat. Before leaving for the front, I provided myself with a considerable amount of chocolate, and as some of it is still left, I should be very happy indeed…."

"Not at all, M——. You must keep it. You won't be able to get any more, you know, and it is a thing of which one can never have too much."

He insists, however, with such cordiality and sincerity, that in the end we are compelled to accept half the chocolate he offers us. We divide it and carefully nibble at our respective portions to make them last as long as possible.

"Have you any tobacco?" asks Porchon, when it is finished.

"You know quite well I have, also that I have no cigarette papers, since you helped me to finish up the last four this morning."

At that M—— calls aloud:

"Gabriel!"

Little Butrel rushes up to us.

"You have some cigarette papers! Pass them around."

Butrel draws from his pocket a bundle of them, and slowly unfolds the leather in which they are wrapped. Then he offers us a packet almost intact, a treasure which he extends with a smile in his blue eyes and about his thin lips. Once again we find ourselves compelled to accept another's kindness.

"I know where to find more," Butrel assures us. "There are some good friends of mine among the artillerymen over at hill X——, and they can get as many as they want."

"But if we remain out here at the advance posts for long, how will you manage then, when your friends the artillerymen are no longer available?"

"Please do not worry about that! When my cigarette-papers are finished, then I will chew or smoke a pipe. Take what you wish … one packet, because that will give me pleasure; a second one because that will please old grandfather. Is that not so, grandfather?"

M—— shakes his head, smiles and turns to us:

"I must tell you that he has been kindness itself to me since I rejoined. And yesterday in the woods, he saved my life. He stood up in the clearing to fire at the Boches, thus giving me time to get to the hilltop. It lasted quite five minutes, and all the time he was firing he was moving down towards them…. Name of a joke! but one would have said that he was playing to get himself killed."

Butrel shrugs his shoulders and begins to hum to himself. Sitting on the ground close to us, he busies himself rolling a cigarette between brown, nicotine-stained fingers. He is a splendid little soldier, this Butrel, once in the Foreign Legion, highly intelligent, straight as a die. For those to whom he takes, he would do anything, but he takes to few, however. Willingly would he die for those who succeed in winning his affections. Wherever he goes he obtains universal respect, sometimes not unmingled with fear. The hardest cases in the company, the bullies who reign over their squads by force of physical fear, give a wide berth to this thin little man, whose head scarcely reaches their shoulders. Those who attempted to molest him in the early days, suddenly found themselves uncomfortable before blue eyes which became unwontedly dark, and they flinched before the nasty threat lurking behind the cold concentrated stare.

Butrel fears neither God nor man. He enters into his proper element when under fire. Let what will happen, it finds him cheerful and all unperturbed. Joking without nervousness or bravado, he moves about as unconcerned amid a tempest of bullets as a fish swimming through the water. No one has ever seen him voluntarily take cover. When trenches are to be dug, he digs with his comrades, "he does his bit!" Nevertheless he finds the task none the less disagreeable; he doubts the utility of such labour. The unforeseen and adventurous fascinates him. Yesterday it pleased him to try and get himself killed in order to save "grandad," because long ago he had decided that grandad was a "stick," and also because it was amusing to stand upright and fire at the Boches in the clearing, precisely as if he were at target-practice. The fact that each of those Boches was armed with an automatic rifle as precise and effective as his own, Butrel ignored. He found the situation amusing, and that was enough.

He hankers after his African wars, those fights of one against five, when one plunged into the midst of wheeling horsemen teeming like wasps, or when the two 75's, set to point-blank range, spat forth their shrapnel to cut long lanes through the massed ranks of rebellious tribesmen; those nights spent beneath canvas, superb nights white with stars, rendered all the more stimulating because the surrounding blackness probably veiled a hundred ambushes; the long, still hours of sentry-go when the eyes sought to scrutinize the dark earth in fear and quaking lest the next instant might reveal the blacks stealing forward, knives between their teeth—those were days and nights after Butrel's own heart.

The present methods of warfare, the endless struggle with an invisible enemy, the shells hurled over miles of countryside, seem to him both tiresome and disgusting.

If it be true, as has been rumoured for several days past, and even more confidently affirmed this very morning, that we are going to entrench and sit down as the Boches have already done, perhaps to remain in sheer idleness with nothing better to do than to watch each other's trenches, Butrel will go to pieces, fall ill, unless…. But the man is a very devil! As sure as the sun shines he will discover some highly intelligent way in which to quench his thirst for danger, and to amuse himself while plunging us into amazement and compelling our admiration! The style of life has not yet been created which will serve to bring Butrel down to the common standard; there is nothing sufficiently dull and depressing to extinguish the ardent flame burning within him, which makes of this little, thin, pale-faced man, with frail limbs, a soldier worthy of an epic!

Towards evening, the men scatter over the fields in quest of straw to provide at least some protection against the night. They set off quickly, spreading out towards the woods over stubble fields in which piles of corn are standing to dry; they return heavy-footed, bending beneath the weight of tremendous sheaves, the stalks of which trail out behind them like a pig-tail; a soft rustling follows their steps.

But when the darkness of the night and deep silence enfold the bivouac, loud calls suddenly ring out. Sharp brief orders bring us quickly to our feet; the sections form up with some difficulty, for the men are still to some degree in the grip of their first sleep. Then the whole battalion moves down towards Mouilly, where, so we are informed, we are going to billet.

What time is it then? Ten o'clock already! We shall have to distribute rations, settle the men in the houses and barns, cook our meat and make coffee—it will be midnight before we shall be able to get to sleep again! And we must go back to the same trenches before dawn!

There is, however, some consolation in the thought that we are going to occupy a solidly-built house, to light a fire, a fire in a real grate for a change, to stretch ourselves out perhaps beneath an eiderdown. We may even be able to take off our boots—those boots of mine, those narrow boots which I have not so far been able to replace, and which torture me inexpressibly! To be warm, to sleep without one's equipment, one's toes quite free in one's socks!… It certainly won't be for long, but that is all the more reason why one should hurry up and get to sleep.

Here we are at the village. An endless buzzing fills it. Supply lorries, dark wagons besieged by the darkness which the light of flickering lanterns only serves to emphasize.

The quartermaster calls to us and leads us along a shadow-filled passage-way. The earth beneath our feet is greasy and slippery.

"To the left, turn to the left. I am holding the door," exclaims our guide.

He strikes a match and lights a bit of candle he takes from a pocket at the bottom of which a hundred other similar objects are constantly accumulating. Then, raising the light, and with a magnificent gesture:

"Here you are, gentlemen! You are at home!"

Our home for that night! That which once was a home! It is no more now than a soulless hovel, a camping-place for casual wayfarers like ourselves, who halt there for a few hours in passing to warm their frozen bodies, and then go on their way, indifferent, unregretful, leaving no trace of their hearts behind them within these old walls, old walls which enshrine the memory of hearts now still, the memory too of hearts not still, but far away in exile, who, remembering the old home, suffer!

Not long elapses before our haven is invaded. The fatigue party appears bringing up the rations for distribution. On a piece of tent canvas spread on the earth, coffee, sugar and rice are heaped in little piles. The corporal on duty, coatless, vestless, with his shirt opened to display a muscular white chest, calls up the sections one after the other. As the men approach, he indicates one of the little heaps with an almost imperceptible movement of his forefinger. Growls and reproaches move him not at all.

"That the sugar? A fat lot, isn't it? Why, you gave the third twice as much as this! It's a bit too thick!"

"There were five extra in the third," replies the corporal. "If you are not satisfied, you had better go and complain to the Ministry. That's all about it!"

During this time, Martin, a miner from the north, busies himself hacking to pieces on the table a huge quarter of beef. To assist him in this undertaking, he has no more than a pocket-knife, a pocket-knife with a safety-catch and a solid blade, which he has possessed since Vauxmarie. He tells us it was given to him by a Boche prisoner overjoyed at finding himself a prisoner, that it is a famous piece of goods, and that there is not another knife in all the company for chopping up a bit of beef to equal that Boche knife handled by him, Martin.

But Martin is a virtuoso where carving is concerned. He perches himself on top of the enormous mass of flesh, slices away at it with long straight strokes, hacks away savagely at resisting tendons, hunching his shoulders, clenching his teeth, flattening still more his polecat-like nose, handling the knife in a very frenzy, grunting, slashing and swearing. And when finally the task is achieved, a profoundly deep sigh of relief escapes Martin. He turns, screws up his eyes, widens his mouth with a smile distorted by the quid he is chewing, squirts a jet of brown saliva from the corner of his mouth on to the ground, and says in a self-satisfied tone, in the tone of a conqueror who, the fight finished, wishes to forget any asperity which may have marred it:

"Some butcher!"

In the fireplace, vine branches hiss and splutter; the flame leaps high, lighting up the chimney plaque, the lines and reliefs of which are deeply buried beneath an accumulation of soot. The fatigue party is gone; there remain with us only the messengers and orderlies. Pannechon investigates a dish, and approaches with some pieces of smoking meat on the point of his knife. Presle wipes the table with a cloth. The others, sitting on the floor, backs to the wall and knees drawn up to chins, smoke their pipes and expectorate.

Rice soup, broiled meat with cooked rice, boiling coffee: the dinner alone is worth the march to Mouilly! And there is a bed for us! A mattress and an eiderdown! We get into it quickly. On the floor beside us our empty boots yawn wide. The dispatch-rider, ensconced in a heap of straw brought in armfuls from the barn, is sleeping heavily and fairly rocking us with his measured snoring. In our turn, we too fall asleep, well replenished, the body at ease, feet unhampered, in a dense atmosphere compounded of the fumes of burnt fat, tobacco and human beings.

Saturday, September 26th.

Beneath the big trees behind the plateau.

Another company of our battalion has taken over our position beside the road. The morning is fresh and limpid. The men are shouting, singing, or laughing. The cooks have set themselves down near us and are busy preparing the morning meal. Around each of the fires men are sitting, absorbed and grave, holding slices of bread on pointed sticks improvised as toasting-forks, before the flames.

Toast! At once the joy and delectation of the campaigning soldier. Rusked, golden and brown, it crunches deliciously between the teeth; it melts in the mouth. There is not one of us but loves it. As soon as a fire is lit, wheresoever it may be, soon a dozen or more men are sitting around it, watching with almost touching seriousness the white bread on the end of their knives or sticks gradually assuming a delightfully warm colour, as if reflecting the flames and stealing something of their golden light. Some of the men vote for those thin slices which become crisp right through; others are all for the thick slices which, between crackling surfaces, still retain some of that steaming humidity as of loaves just withdrawn from a baker's oven. But in any shape or form, one and all love toast!

The coffee circulates. We are sitting, Porchon and I, at the foot of a giant plane tree, our backs against the smooth bole of it, our hips between two moss-covered roots which rise out of the ground like the arms of an armchair. We have stolen a branch from a cherry tree and are trying to make pipes for ourselves. "Necessity is the mother of industry;" and hence our labours. The making of a pipe, however, requires some skill.

Bernadot, the cook, has carved himself one which is quite a masterpiece: stem straight and drawing well, bowl smooth and deep. He has even gone so far as to carve a comrade's face out of the wood: enormous eyes in a small head, grimacing mouth, and aggressive beard, thrust well forward like the prow of a ship.

Porchon, by sheer force of will (he is scarlet, and the veins on his forehead stand prominently forth!) has so far obtained rather indecisive, but nevertheless encouraging, results. His piece of wood is slowly shaping and deepening, and unmistakably assuming something of the appearance of a pipe.

As for me, I have already been compelled to excuse three spoilt attempts by pointing out that cherry wood is hard, my knife blunt, and my fingers sore. Undeterred by these failures, however, I am starting once more, when, without the slightest warning, three high explosives burst simultaneously close to us, but rather too short. Others follow immediately, flying high, and three plumes of black smoke rise from the shattered earth a hundred yards behind us beyond the wood; range too long! Yet again come a third batch, but this time they drop far from us, exploding away to the right, uprooting a few small pines and throwing them into the air together with tremendous lumps of earth. Before us; behind us; to the right of us! It seems almost prophetic. We rise and pass through the undergrowth without haste, away to the left.

We are now out of all danger and can even afford to enjoy ourselves. One would say that the Boche artillerymen are trying to make their last shells fall in the holes dug by the first; they must be firing without any other object than to consume the regulation amount of ammunition. All that remains for us to do is to lie low until they have finished.

There is the noise of branches being thrust violently aside, of someone running over the fallen leaves, followed by a long-drawn call which resounds through the wood:

"Hullo!…"

Someone in our ranks cries: "Here!"

The steps approach, and very shortly the face of a man emerges from the cover. He is breathless and greatly upset.

"A doctor," he says. "Where can I find a doctor? One is wanted instantly…."

"What has happened?"

The man replies hurriedly, almost incoherently:

"It is Favreau … cyclist of the 8th … a leg almost shot away about a minute since … the first three shells which fell behind the road … he is bleeding to death … his leg must be tied up … he is going out, he is certainly going out…."

The doctor whose services the man has impressed, tells us when he returns that he found the wounded man in a dying condition:

"The femoral severed, the leg almost torn away. I made a ligature and got him away on an ambulance; but he will never arrive alive at Mouilly."

It is five o'clock in the evening. We are on the way to the advance posts.

We march through a narrow clearing which is no more than a ribbon of black earth between piles of dead leaves on the one side, and all-invading moss on the other. The thickets are dense and filled with a sea-green penumbra. The sinking sun is directly behind us. Its failing light streams over the moving file of men, leaving golden reflections in the tin bowls fastened to their packs. The heads of the men rise and fall with their unequal steps, causing an undulation to pass from one end of the section to the other.

There is no talking. Our feet make no noise on that moist earth, in which each nail leaves a clear imprint. Occasionally, a timid twittering is heard amid the silence, as faint and self-effacing as the failing sun-rays gliding into the undergrowth between the leaves of the trees.

Suddenly the surly detonation of a 75 shatters the peace; soon all the guns hidden in the wood intone a brutal chorus; the clamour envelops us; each shot seems to hurtle past with a violence sufficient to burst the gun firing it. Then a murmuring echo flies from valley to valley, gradually becoming weaker and weaker until swamped by the tremendous outburst of another salvo. To all this noise, however, we are strangely used. It seems in some curious way to mingle with the material things about us, to harmonize with them, to belong as it were to the melancholy of the dying day. We no longer jump as the guns speak; we no longer hear them; we are conscious only of the curious melody of the echoes which decrease and decrease, then sound anew with increased force, decrease again and increase again, finally to die away in a sad, tremulous murmur which spreads far away over the earth.

The evening draws on. We are approaching the edge of the wood. Beside the road lie some tattered knapsacks, some shattered bayonets; a little further on blood-stained bandages are lying on the moss, shirts, a flannel waist-band, some nameless rags, the lining of a waistcoat; further on again the body of a dead man appears stretched to his full length, face turned to the earth.

All along the edge of the clearing are shell-holes at almost regular intervals; enormous roots which have been shattered display their pale wounds. Then the shell-holes concentrate, all of them being still within the clearing, mute evidences of an admirably-directed fire. The men affirm that our artillery placed a barrage along this marked line on the evening of the 24th. They have such simple faith, these men, in the power of our guns! It may or may not have been so; personally I prefer to believe that it was so.

We halt a little before attaining the edge of the wood in a clearing surrounded by giant trees whose waving tops are lost to sight in the darkening sky.

There is a vague odour of corpses, which from time to time becomes oppressive. A few steps from our little shelter a corpse is resting against a pile of faggots in an attitude of relaxation and peace. The man was eating when killed instantaneously by a shell; he still holds in his hand a little tin fork; his waxlike face reveals no sign of pain; at his feet lie an opened tin of meat and an iron plate—an object which reminds me of those in which day-scholars at communal schools bring their dinners, and which have letters of the alphabet and figures engraved round the edge.

Flimsy and singularly draughty is our little shelter. Two pointed stakes support a branch as centre beam; other branches, cut at random and of all sizes and shapes, rest against this central beam and so make a hut. I should call it a roof without walls, decorated with disconcerting gaps, admitting the light of heaven where least expected. Someone has commenced to fill in the interstices; lumps of clay have been plastered on the framework, from the ground to halfway up; thus, when one lies down one is protected a little; we would, in fact, be quite snug if this plaster or clay covered the whole hut.

To do that will be our task to-morrow. This evening it is too late; the night is already upon us. Our last duty is to eat our cold repast, a slice of bread, a morsel of meat, which we have brought with us.

Sunday, September 27th.

I resolved this morning to go and see the adjutant whom I am due to relieve with the fall of the day. I leave the clearing towards midday, taking with me a dispatch-bearer. The weather remains the same as yesterday. The cold dawn mist has evaporated little by little; a few dewdrops still remain scintillating in the sun's rays.

A big boundary stone, covered with lichen lies in my path; two tracks branch away from this stone. My companion, who stumbles against the stone, looks at me in doubtful perplexity.

"But there are two ways! Which is ours?"

I reflect briefly. The left of our line extends until it joins the 6th. On the right we touch the 5th, which guards the road. The road is some distance away, but that must be our direction, and so I stride along the path to the right. Ah! Ah! Stop a little … it is uncomfortably open just here. I did not know we were so near the edge of the wood. From a trench, two heads have arisen, as well as a hand, waved violently. The combination has proved sufficient to induce me to moderate my gait. Stooping and half running, I come up to the line of infantrymen. A joyous voice reaches me:

"Ah! there you are, Lieutenant! It is quite all right here. Only one must be careful not to show oneself because of shrapnel … you want to see the Adjutant? He is over there with Gendre and Lebret."

"Thank you, Lormerin. Nothing has happened during the night?"

"What do you think! All they have done is to lie still. As I tell you, we are quite blissful here … you will find him ten or fifteen yards away to the right."

Of course I have to cover at least fifty, stumbling over feet, and doing the acrobat to pass the men squatting in the trench. At last I see Gendre and Lebret. Gendre, who perceives me first, points out to me a man lying down.

"Don't ask him to make room for you," he says. "He would not hear you; he is dead. You will have to step over him."

Then, stooping down, he calls along the trench:

"Adjutant, the Lieutenant is here."

From the earth rises a groan; a formless mass of straw moves and rises; the head of the Adjutant appears, his hair dishevelled and full of pieces of straw, his eyes weary from lack of sleep, his beard untrimmed and also full of dirt. The Adjutant seems very ill! The thinness of his cheeks is marked; a brown stain colours his eyelids; a dirty livid tint has spread over his face.

"Hullo! What is this then, Roux! Are things not going well with you?"

"I? I am about done, that is clear. Aches all over, chest stove in, a horse fever … it won't be long before I am sent down."

He rises to his feet, groaning again, his hands pressed to the small of his back, his chest huddled together, and seats himself on the edge of the trench at a spot which is protected by a bush.

"Sit here beside me," he says, "and I will point things out to you."

Before us extends an untilled plain bounded on the further side of the valley by steep heights. Without doubt the village lies at the bottom of the valley, but from where I am sitting it is not possible to see the houses; only one or two isolated farms. To the left, the wood forms a pronounced salient which attracts the eye. A dense cluster of pines has thrust its way right into the middle of the plain, where it forms a splash of sombre colour, opaquely green, but astonishingly fresh and distinct against the seared yellows of the surroundings.

"It is not occupied," says the Adjutant. "A patrol beat it out last night; it is quite quiet this side. From here I should say it is about six or seven hundred yards distant. The Boches must be just at the edge of the valley. I should say they are a thousand yards away, so there's plenty of time to see them coming if they should take it into their heads to attack…. That's nothing—I am more worried about that clump of pines. I don't think it would be a bad idea to send out a few men every night to prevent the Germans stealing up in the darkness and falling right on top of us one morning. That, at least, is what I think."

He raises his forefinger as a rifle shot rings out from the enemy's lines, followed a moment later by a second and fainter detonation, echoing the first.

"Ping…. Pang!" he says. "That is some idiot who has been amusing himself since day-break. Every ten minutes he sends four bullets to four different points in our line. The second should come over here."

And sure enough the Boche's rifle speaks again. The faint crack echoes while the leaden messenger flies high and whistling through the still air.

"You see what sort of a fool he is," comments the Adjutant. "He must be firing at the larks! But there is something more serious I must point out to you. Follow me closely. That corner of the pines to the right there … you see it? … Good! Now three fingers still to the right, there is a large bush in a hollow with some brambles before it and two solitary trees behind it. You see it?… Good! Well, raise your glasses and watch for a few moments. You will probably learn something."

I level my glasses and cover the bushes as directed. I see the under part of the leaves, bright and brilliant; the upper surface, sombre and dead. The upper ones are clear-cut and distinct against a sky, almost white; below there are open spaces which permit the light to filter through, but lower down, nearer the earth, the leaves are incredibly thick, presenting an impenetrable curtain.

The Adjutant continues: "You will see to the left of the bush a kind of natural screen; it is there he waits."

Scarcely had he finished speaking when I saw at the precise spot indicated by him, a head surmounted by a flat helmet. It rose swiftly and disappeared even more quickly, plunging down behind the leaves. I turn towards the Adjutant, who is silently laughing.

"So you have seen them!" he exclaims. "Or rather you have seen one of them … there are two of them hidden there. Since I first marked them this morning, they have become almost like old acquaintances; at any rate, I have been able to gather what their little plan is. The man who just showed himself is the spy. His companion is squatting on the earth beside a field telephone. All the spy can ferret out with his eyes, is transmitted illico. When evening comes, the telephonist will pack his little box, tuck it under his arm, wind the wire on to its bobbin and the day's work will be done. You can send men out to the nest during the night, but you won't find those cunning blackbirds there."

"But why," I ask, "do you not clear out the bush? Isn't it rather thick to let those brutes play their dirty game right under your nose?"

"Why? It is a case for consideration, you understand. If I fire upon those two Boches, within five minutes shrapnel will be hailing down upon us, and I am certain to have wounded and killed upon my hands. I prefer to keep my men well hidden and undisturbed while the Boche twists his neck out of joint, running the risk always of picking up a bullet, without discovering more than the tail of a blue coat. But all the same, if you are here to-morrow and the bush is still occupied, you can fire if you will, and perhaps you will be right. To-day, however, I am ill, and, with your permission, I vote for tranquillity."

"We'll let it go at that, on the understanding that not one of your men shows himself while it is still light. You are not permitting smoking, of course?"

"I do know at least a little about the business," answered the Adjutant with melancholy. "If I could only scotch one or two of them to cure them I would be content. Ping! Pang! do you hear it, there's my brother idiot recommenced! Ah, well, let it pass. Peace until to-night, anyhow! I am going to crawl into my straw again."

A shell bursting in the clearing heralds my return to the little shelter. The Quartermaster calls out from the interior:

"At least, Lieutenant, no one can say you don't announce yourself! Something like a gong that!"

He turns his back to a veritable volley of shells which falls into the open space. The fracas is terrific, fragments of metal fly in all directions before the opening to the shelter with a remarkably unpleasant "frrt."

"Oh! Oh!" cries Porchon. "Those are 105's. They are serving us well!"

"If they continue," jokes the Quartermaster, "they are going to demolish our little house. This roof is only proof against 77's. Look out!"

Yet another avalanche behind us. A volley of fragments strikes the branches sharply, followed immediately by an immense creaking and cracking, a violent agitation of high branches, and the reverberating crash of a tree falling.

We are about to be called upon to endure a scientifically regulated bombardment. The men are not pleased. I put my head outside to see them lying upon the moss, scattered in widely-separated groups of two or three. They all have their kit on their back and await unmoved the end of this sprinkling.

The shells in their fury shatter the undergrowth, laying bare the black soil beneath. They create an ear-splitting din, flying across the clearing, now growing distant, now returning to burst directly over our heads, tearing down entire trees, hurling roots into the air, scattering the thicket to the four winds. But they strike blindly and unseeing like maddened, unintelligent brutes; their fury, which should be terrible, becomes simply grotesque, a mere impotent frenzy.

When the inferno about us dies down a little, one can hear the shrapnel mewing over the first line of our section. And when I remember the Adjutant and his extravagant precautions, I feel an almost irresistible desire to laugh.

The moment comes when, the last shell having sent its leaden charge over us, complete silence again falls over the woods. There follow several seconds of inaction, during which one becomes conscious of muscles still instinctively shrinking, of the throbbing of the blood in the arteries. Then here and there heads pop up. Soon the men are sitting up ridding themselves anew of their equipment, rising to their feet, and stretching themselves. That little interlude is ended!

Night overtook me in the cutting while I was leading my poilus to relieve the Adjutant. Beneath the trees darkness reigns supreme, a blackness that seems almost palpable, which our eyes strive vainly to pierce. It is as if a wall surrounds us which advances with each step forward we take; it amazes us that we do not strike either feet or face against it; we thrust forth an arm to touch it, but we never succeed in touching it, for it recedes and vanishes before our very finger-tips. Always beyond our reach, yet always there before us, imprisoning us.

I halt my men at the edge of the wood. The shadows here are less dense. Immediately before us is the unpeopled space of the open. As one by one we pick out the vague forms of the bushes, it almost seems as if they had moved to look at us before recomposing themselves to slumber.

I jump down into the trench where I detect a man lying down and grasp his shoulder, but he does not move. I shake him, more and more violently, and all unprotestingly he permits me to do so. How the fellow sleeps! Then I bring my face so close that I touch his. Ugh!… A skin clammy and cold, over a deadly soft flesh. This is a corpse! The ghastliness of the encounter sends a clutching to my heart. Carefully I step over the body and advance a few paces, calling softly. After a time a voice replies. I walk towards it, my feet rustling the straw; near me I hear invisible movements—now at least I am in the midst of the living!

"What section is this?" I ask.

"The third section, Lieutenant."

"I require a man to lead me to the Adjutant."

"Present! Letertre."

"Good! Let us get out of the trench or we'll never make progress. I will follow you."

While we march along, whipped by clusters of leaves, torn by embracing thorns, Letertre questions me:

"You did not stumble over a dead body before you chanced on us, did you?… Yes! Ah, well! That is number one point they have marked. There are plenty of other bodies further along between the 6th and us; but coming from the clearing and descending into the trench, you fall directly on top of that one, who is the last of our file. You should then turn carefully to the right. Count thirty or thirty-five steps…. Having done so, you will find a shirt we have spread on the ground. That represents the second marked point and means that you should take a half-turn to the left. Just there the line advances a little. Walking straight ahead from that point, you would enter the wood and lose yourself. Hallo! Here is the shirt."

A faint white blot lay at our feet; had the blackness been less opaque, it might have been a ray of veiled moonlight filtering through the trees. Letertre continued:

"You are following me, are you not, Lieutenant? Now twenty-five more steps bring us to a second body. The journey is almost ended then, provided one does not stray away to the right. Ten yards or so alone separate us from the second section. By daylight, of course, it is all very simple, and one can walk boldly ahead; but if these little precautions are neglected by night, one may lose oneself a hundred times over in the cursed forest…. Now where is that body? It is impossible to pass it without knowing. You understand?… It is difficult to see. Ah, there it is! This way a little or you will tread right on it—he is lying all over the place. All right?… Good! We must keep well to the right here or we shall find ourselves up to the eyes in those brambles, which appear to be nothing from here, but which, nevertheless, rise higher than your head. And now, Lieutenant, we have reached our destination. I will go back again if you have no further need of me…. Good night!"

I find the Adjutant still buried in the straw. Faithful Lebret, who cooks for him and never leaves his side, has thrown over him a covering found at the bottom of a cupboard back in Mouilly. I can distinguish the vague whiteness of it in the trench.

"I am sorry you should have come all the way up to relieve me," says the Adjutant. "It was careless of me not to explain to you the marks and signs to keep you on the proper road when you were here earlier. But I was in such a rotten condition, I did not think of it. Moreover, you know, I was no longer expecting you."

While addressing me, he is shivering with fever and the cold. All the time he talks his teeth chatter audibly.

"Just get your men ready," I reply. "I am going to fetch mine up immediately. With the best will in the world, however, I can't place them in five minutes."

"Listen!" he says, in the same shaky voice. "I would much prefer you to wait for daybreak. The night is drawing on; I have made all dispositions, and, after all, one place is about as good as another. I would rather remain here a few hours longer than go through the muddle and upset which it will be impossible to avoid if we arrange the relief now. And I am sure my men are one with me in this."

"I agree most willingly. But it is your turn to pass into reserve, you know!"

"Bah! Everything is quiet. The Boches won't come out of their holes. Pristi! What a night! Darker than the throat of a wolf…. Until the morning then, Lieutenant?"

"I shall be back shortly before daybreak, Roux."

Monday, September 28th.

Before the dawn this morning, the whole battalion was relieved. We retired to the second line a mile to the rear. We are still close to the Boches, however, so close in fact that this cannot be regarded as a real rest; in case of attack we must sustain the shock together with the first line. Although, however, it cannot justly be described as more than a half-rest, it is, none the less, not to be despised. Hidden deep in the forest, we are invisible even to reconnoitring aeroplanes; we can come and go freely, lounge outside the trench, return to it only in case of an alarm.

Whistling, my hands in my pockets, I stroll as far as a neighbouring cross-road. I find the Captain there, smoking his eternal cigarettes rolled in extraordinarily long cigarette-papers. He points out to me a dead German stretched out lower down the slope. Someone has covered the man's face with a handkerchief, neatly folded his great-coat and placed it beside him. The man's unbuttoned waistcoat reveals a bloodstained shirt. His hands, very white now, still seem to be supple and living: they have but just relaxed after the final death struggle; they are not the stiff and rigid hands of those who have been dead many hours and are already turning to dust.

"He has just died?" I ask.

"Five minutes ago! He was found in the woods and brought here just as we arrived. He fell in an assault three days ago, and his men were unable to take him back with them. Three days and three nights lying between the lines! He was dying as much from cold and exhaustion as from his wounds when one of our patrols found him at daybreak. A fine, big fellow, isn't he?"

He was indeed, and well groomed, too. I had not noticed that at first. His uniform was a shade darker than that of an ordinary private; his trousers were fastened at the knees; his high, soft leather boots revealed a pair of muscular legs.

"An officer?" I ventured.

"Lieutenant of reserve, and probably commanding a company. But I hadn't either the time or inclination to question him. He had asked in French for an officer speaking German. They brought me. When I came up, he was lying beside the trench, eyes filming, lips blue, dying then but perfectly clear in his mind. He entrusted to my care some personal papers and letters which he requested me to forward to his people, advising them of his death through the intermediary of the Red Cross. He dictated their address and thanked me; then he let his head fall and was dead without even a sigh. A real man, that!"

I regained my trench sunk in melancholy thought. No longer did I see the forest about me, beautiful in its last and most splendid garb. Here is the trench, a narrow ditch between two vertical walls of earth. A few scattered men are fast asleep at the bottom of it. The night will see it peopled from end to end. And away beyond the edge of the wood there are more and still more trenches like this, one and all filled with soldiers. Further away, over the plain, are other trenches, but they are filled with soldiers who are not like ours. We dig, but over there, where the men in the spiked helmets teem, they too dig, and more and better than we do. I have watched them at work, these human moles. Along the Cuisy valley, I one day watched them through my glasses for hours, and saw them handling pick and shovel with a vigour that knew no pause or slackening. As soon as they can safely call a halt, the Boches instantly dig their holes and take refuge in them. If they advance, they entrench themselves, to ensure continued possession of the ground they have won. If they retreat, yet again they entrench in order the better to repulse the assaults hurled against them. And day by day I see, facing our lines, these entrenchments grow and extend, escalating hills, plunging into valleys, crossing plains; deep trenches with their parapets stark and clear against the sun, with their meshed miles of barbed wire rising high before the machine-gun emplacements.

First we checked them, then we rolled them back. In the ensuing pause, both armies are now regaining their breath. Panting from their recent exertions, too weary yet once again to hurl themselves against the barrier we present and pass onwards over our bodies, they have set themselves down on the soil of France, which they still occupy.

And that they may remain in greater security and comfort, they have set up their barriers against us. Ingeniously, methodically, they accumulate and multiply the obstacles. Nothing is left to chance; every yard of ground they hold will have its guard of rifles; behind each hilltop there will be big guns. There is no gap, no weak point. From Flanders to Alsace, from the North Sea to the frontiers of Switzerland, one immense, stupendous fort is being created, which we must shatter before we can pass.

When may we hope to pass it? October is already here; very shortly now we shall have the storms, the snows, the rains, all those elements that combine to discount mobility. If we are to hold on, we must dig as they do; must learn to construct shelters of branches with sand-bagged roofs. We must teach ourselves to wait without weariness through the long, grey days and the black, cold, endless nights. It is going to be a hard business! When one is hungry, one can tighten one's belt; when idle, write letters or dream; when cold, light a fire, or stamp one's feet, or thrust hands into pockets, or breathe on one's fingers. But when the heart, growing heavy, begins to sink into one of those unfathomable seas of despondency and despair; when one's sufferings arise not from things physical but from oneself, where may one look for succour then? How escape those black hours? The close of a lugubrious day represents the last word in depression. Is not the dying away of a day, of one more day, always sad, with the light fading regretfully as though pregnant with memory of so many long hours of light?

Pondering these things, I forget the Boches dug in opposite us, the watch we should keep, the bloody struggle that must inevitably ensue sooner or later when we shall have acquired both the will and the strength to overthrow them and trample them to the dust. For a great trial is descending upon me, and it is one I cannot escape—the tremendous struggle against the perils and lurking evils of idleness. On the very threshold, I already tremble at what lies ahead. May I always be on my guard against the insidious ambushes before my footsteps, and find myself on the return of the hour of action with all my strength and courage undiminished!

Two shells falling shatter my reflections. A man drops on to his back crying: "M——!" There is something for me to do here, and no mistake. Towards the cross-roads some horses burst into shrill neighs of fear, their drivers swearing and loudly cracking their whips. Then two grey wagons appear, tilting on to two wheels as they swing towards the trench, the drivers lashing the spume-whitened horses with all their might. Into the woods they plunge, wheels thundering, creaking, rattling. They are the supply wagons, galloping madly for safety. The fatigue party will have several miles further to walk to-night!

"Everyone take cover in the trench!"

These shells descend upon us without warning. I was watching one of my men ramming the tobacco into his pipe at a moment when two more burst right on top of us: the hissing shell, the grimace of the man and the plunge he made, the hail of bullets amid the branches, combined to create a single impression of an attack evil and unforeseen. It is too swift; the instinctive reflex action one's body makes to protect itself occurs too late. The shell which comes with a shriek to herald its approach is a very different thing; that which explodes immediately over your head without the faintest sign of warning is both more dangerous and nerve-shaking; for a long time following these unexpected explosions the hands continue to tremble.

There they go again! Is the visitation going to endure the whole day? Every ten minutes or so we are being sprinkled with shrapnel, followed by high-explosive shells, which make the earth tremble and quiver. And they are all 77's. The firing too is direct, as a rifle is aimed, and therefore almost unbearable. Judging by the tremendous speed at which their shells arrive, they must be fired from very close at hand; the Boches must have brought a couple of guns up into their first line and are operating beneath our very noses as it were. I would not mind betting, indeed, that they have planted the two ugly little beasts right in Saint RÉmy itself! Our outposts will have marked and ranged them at the very first shot, however. And so, thanks to a superb and perfected system of communication, it will not be long before they are either demolished or muzzled. Meanwhile, I know quite well their savage barking will continue until the Boche gunners become tired of the game. That is a thorn in our flesh of which we cannot for the moment rid ourselves, and so we must remain until nightfall, huddled up in the trench, our knees up to our chins, denied the liberty and freedom that lie beneath the trees.

When night does arrive at last, it finds us completely exhausted—backs aching, legs incredibly stiff. Porchon and I have been tightly jammed together at the bottom of the trench—a place not remarkable for spaciousness, and made more uncomfortable by the sharp stones littering the ground. My revolver stuck in my ribs; my flask in my hip; one of Porchon's knees was in my stomach. To sleep on the hard ground, good! We have been well broken in to that. But here the accumulation of discomforts becomes almost unendurable. An involuntary movement and Porchon groans woefully, for now he has both my knees in his stomach. What a posture to be in! What a hole to find oneself in! As soon as one moves, one crushes one's neighbour; as soon as he moves, he crushes you. Leave the trench and lie down on the dead leaves? But there are the shells, and there is the cold to penetrate to your very marrow, and keep you always conscious of your own misery!

I have never before, however, encountered any trench quite as bad as this one. The time draws on; I woo sleep and call myself a fool for my pains. Still, of many evils choose the least and pay the shot as cheerfully as possible. So I wedge all my equipment, including my revolver, flask, glasses, map-case, between my stomach and my thighs, and in this way relieve the strain on my back. Afterwards I extract the stones which project unreasonably and fling them carefully over the parapet. Things are slightly improved by these manoeuvres, and, affectionately clasping my miscellaneous collection to my bosom, I fall into a doze.

Tuesday, September 29th.

The aforesaid two filthy little guns have been harassing us nearly all day. This evening, however, we evacuated that shell-riddled and particularly undesirable corner of the landscape. Already Mouilly is behind us, and here is Moulin-Bas, the stream filled with rushes, the sea of slender trees, the large farmhouse with the tiled roof near the cross-roads. A sunset crimson, but cold, marking the end of a glorious winter's day. The lines of the heights are cut stark and clear against a soft sky, darkening little by little, as though under protest. At the end of the road a spire uplifts its delicate silhouette; in a field are some 75's, which, in contrast with the houses, seem no more dangerous than pretty little playthings.

Halt at the approach to the village, while commands pass down the lines.

"Dress by the right!… Ground arms!…"

Some of the men sneer a little. At the end of the section preceding us, a fair little man with crimson cheeks, whose puttees, very badly rolled, sag over his boots, taps his pipe lightly against the stock of his rifle, places it in his pocket, spits a last time, and growls:

"There you are! We are certainly going to sign peace to-morrow! We might be re-entering barracks after a march. Tighten straps! Heads erect! Fasten your eyes on the clock tower! All, but joking apart … we are at war!"

The corps commander in person appears on horseback, and he is not well pleased with things:

"No smartness about them … slovenly … nothing military…."

With arms ported and marching as if on parade we enter at last into the promised land. As we pass each corner of a road, a company debouches and hurries off to its quarter. The 7th turns to the left and goes off towards Rupt.

The men are pleased with their billets, and say so. The barns are spacious and warm and full of hay. The pork-butcher's wife who sells the pig's-head brawns, those brawns covered with a golden jelly which positively glide down one's throat, has her shop in the middle of our domain. And twenty yards beyond the last house, the stream spreads out to form a peaceful pond, preserved and kept clean by a mere trickle. Could one ask for anything better in which to wash one's linen?

We are already installed, rifles racked along the sides of the barn, when the battalion adjutant thrusts his face and pipe around our door. I shall not attempt to set down the language that ensued; but, briefly, we had to un-install ourselves. Farewell, thou golden-jellied brawn, farewell!

We are set down for duty in the vicinity of a sawmill. Logs of timber of equal lengths, planks already sawn, are piled outside the sheds. We have to set a sentry, bayonet fixed, to help the cooks preserve the timber from the depredations of those frail mortals who might be tempted to help themselves and merrily burn the mill's stock. A temptation not difficult to understand!

"And now," says Porchon to me, "we have got to fit ourselves out again! There must surely be some precious things about here; but perhaps in an hour or so they will carry them off."

There ensues the usual chase for rations. For that business one should possess the scent of a hound to worry out obscure corners; and diplomacy, to reach the hearts of these peasants and overcome their hesitation—for they always hesitate, never freely parting with whatever they may have for sale, hoping that another purchaser may come along and offer more than you are offering.

A freemasonry which tends to mutual benefit exists among campaigning comrades:

"Look here! Down that lane, the third house to the left, the one with the green shutters, there is an old woman who sells eggs…."

Let us go and investigate! The old woman, horrible to look upon, dry as the seared vine, toothless, filthy, untidy strands of grey hair hanging about her face, raises her arm to the sky and calls upon the Holy Virgin to witness that she has nothing, nothing at all…. We mention a price, a ridiculous, extortionate figure. It is plain magic; the arm drops instantly; her voice descends an octave; and then the old miser glides along a passage-way thick with fowl-droppings, bends her body to pass through a low doorway, emerges with caution, carrying something in her apron. And when she approaches again, half a dozen eggs are clutched in her claw-like hands—they are white as milk in contrast with her dirty, lined palms. They are still warm when she drops them into our pockets. In a lowered voice, with lips stiffly drawn over her bare gums, she says:

"Do not tell anyone about it. Perhaps I shall have some more for you when my hens have laid. But don't breathe a word about it. Mind, not a word!"

Porchon has discovered some plum jam. Jam?—it is rather a compound of quinces scarcely sweetened.

"I paid seven sous a quarter for this mixture," he informs me. "The pigs who sold it to me had two enormous copper cans full of it on their counter, and they emptied them in half an hour at the same price."

The robbers! Before the war, these quinces were left to ferment in hogsheads. Each hogshead gave a few pints of brandy at forty sous, and the pulp of the fruit was then thrown into the fire. It is not an augury of good times ahead!

We dine with an old Alsatian woman, a neat clean old woman, rosy and well preserved. She wears a bonnet, round and very white, so white that never before in the whole Meuse district have I seen one quite so chic and prepossessing. A doorway of bricks, newly washed, clean and as red as one's face after a wash in cold water; furniture which shines as does the top of the table covered with brown oilcloth. Above the sink a brass bracket reflects the light of our lamp and sends a pencil of light through the darkness.

"Cabbage soup!" announces Presle, "and after that we have roast fowl."

Oh! that roast fowl! A consumptive hen, a lamentable thing, lying on its back in the middle of an immense dish. To the head with its closed eyes was attached a body about as big as a fig, and the claws, which Presle had neglected to remove, were crisp, black and contracted as though in agony.

"It is certainly not a Bresse fowl," explains Presle in self-extenuation. "And, at the same time, I believe that her flirtations must have made a long-distance walker of her before I wrung her neck. All the same, it is fowl."

After dining, I inspect a collection of shoes which the cyclist has picked up, I know not where. It is difficult to make a selection: these are too broad, those are too long; some are already worn; others, which fit exactly and appear on first sight to be made of soft yet solid leather, unexpectedly reveal a long cut. At length I choose a pair with welted soles, newly clumped, of which the cyclist says:

"I guarantee them for six months without repair, Lieutenant. They will carry you to the end of the campaign, of that you can be certain."

"Amen!" I replied.

We go out arm in arm, Porchon and myself. The night is not very dark. The piles of planks near the sheds rise in dark, geometrical masses. The village to the right is lightless and still; away to the left, towards the cemetery, a pale mist broods over the fields. An undulating line of willows marks the course of the stream which they veil. The line continues to the foot of an abrupt slope, rising to the south-east like a gigantic wall.

"Where are you taking me?" asks Porchon.

"Just wait a little and you will see."

We walk in silence, occasionally burying our feet in heaps of soft ashes, which mark the spots where braziers have burnt.

"Point of direction, that isolated house," I explain, after a time. "There are some steps and an iron railing. Hold on to me, old man! You are going to see what you are going to see."

I take the stone steps in three jumps and knock at the door. Children's voices die abruptly to silence, a step sounds over the floor, the latch clicks, and the door opening wraps us in a gust of warm air.

We are in a smoky kitchen, dimly lit by a single candle placed on the table. From a line across the room hang stockings, handkerchiefs, swaddling clothes, drying above a stove. The chairs, scattered here and there, are all encumbered with a heterogeneous collection of things—a wash hand basin, a pair of pants, dirty dishes. Beneath one's feet one crushes certain soft things, remains of food probably, or chewed tobacco.

Our host is still a young man, sickly, pale, thin as a skeleton, his moustache and hair light-coloured. He offers us his hand with a tired gesture; it is a feverish hand, in which one can discover no bones, but only cartilages; and which, when you release it, leaves some of its moisture on your palm.

"We have been awaiting you," says the man. "My wife has prepared beds for you in that corner there, against those sacks of bran."

The woman, who is also a blonde, but swollen and paunched, leaves her chair near the stove, shakes off three or four urchins hanging to her skirts, and raises the candle from the table.

We can see clearly now. Along the sides of the plastered wall sacks are stacked. In these sacks the miller has placed a plentiful litter of straw, and, what is still more important, of an even depth all over. On the top of the straw she has placed a feather mattress, blankets and sheets. To-night we're going to have sheets, a real bed, a complete bed. We're going to undress ourselves, to instal ourselves between two sheets, wearing nothing but our shirts. I steal a glance at Porchon from the corner of my eye; his face plainly expresses his unfeigned delight and joy. Suddenly he turns towards me, places his hand on my shoulder, and regarding me with warm, affectionate eyes, says:

"You brick!"

Our bed that night was a thing never to be forgotten. Undressed in a twinkling of an eye, we plunged into its depths. And instantly it wrapped us from head to foot in a sweet, gentle embrace. Then in our turn, little by little, detail by detail, we took possession of it. There was no end to our surprise; each second produced some new discovery; in vain we sought with the whole of our body for some hardness, but there was no corner that was not soft and warm. Our bodies, which remembered all the stones of the field, all the gaps in the soil, and the greasy humidity of the woods, the harsh dryness of the stubble-fields; our bodies, bruised by nights of bivouac, by the straps of our equipment, by our shoes, by the weight of the knapsack, by all the harness of wanderers who know no roof—our bodies at present were unable swiftly to accustom themselves to so much softness and pleasure, all at one and the same time. And we broke into shouts of laughter; we expressed our enthusiasm in burlesque phrases, in formidable pleasantries, each one of which provoked new laughter which knew no end. And the man laughed at seeing us laugh, and his wife laughed, and the urchins laughed; the hovel was full of laughter.

Then the woman stole out, and when she returned she was escorting five or six of the neighbouring villagers. And all these women, too, watched us laughing, and exclaimed in astonishment and chorus at this phenomenal spectacle—two poor devils so far scorned by death; two soldiers of the great war who had fought often, had suffered much, delirious now with happiness, laughing with the abandonment of children because they were sleeping for that one night in a bed!

Wednesday, September 30th.

A happy party are we, up above Amblonville valley. A tempered sun, a sky intensely blue, with a few little white clouds idling by. Near me on a slope the men are digging a trench; I have brought them almost up to a summit where clay gives way to chalk. Their task is easy; the picks loosen huge flakes of soft stone which scarcely adhere to each other, and which part at a single stroke. Earth such as this does not blunt or spoil the tools, and the work proceeds without pause. It is not like clay which sticks whatever one may do, compelling one constantly to scrape pick and shovel with a knife or a sharp stone.

Far away below, in a meadow beside a stream, the cooks have lit their fires. About pots-au-feu which crown the flames are gathered a few men in blue and red. The whole picture is so clear-cut and distinct that by concentrating my attention I am able to recognize each one of these pigmy-like men.

A few yards from the stream, and because camp-buckets are heavy to carry when they are full of water, Lebret is holding his particular assizes. The Adjutant is squatting close to the flame, and Gendre, stripped of his equipment, and in his vest, is balancing himself and walking on his hands.

In the middle of the meadow, I can easily distinguish the cooks of my section. The man who is kneeling down and puffing at the green wood and half vanishing from time to time in the smoke, is Pinard, hairy among the most hairy in the company; Pinard, who grumbles incessantly, but who always works like any other four men put together. That other, bending so solicitously over certain dishes, is Fillot, the fatigue corporal, inspecting some particularly choice morsel which he has carefully placed aside before the distribution of rations, as every corporal of ordinary intelligence and respectful of traditions, does do.

Further to the right, on the other side of the road which descends from our hill to rejoin the main road, the Captain is sitting on an old tree-trunk and drawing designs in the dust with the point of his lance, chatting at the same time with the doctor, who is standing near him. Behind them lies an overturned, rusty plough.

I have carefully sharpened the point of my pencil, and, using my map-case as a desk, I scribble a few letters. A few words only: "In good health; best wishes." I cannot permit myself to tell them all that is in my heart. And why should I tell them? Shall I repeat again and again what is in my heart: "Please write me. I have received nothing from you since I set out. I feel all alone and that is hard——" I know well that not a day has passed without their sending me words of courage and tenderness, in the hope that they may find me, that I may read them, and that by them my courage will be strengthened and sustained. I should be ill-advised to destroy that hope. I must wait and wait, consecrating all my powers to preserving intact that confidence which I so essentially needed, which up to the present moment has never deserted me. So my pen moves swiftly, setting down those banalities which nevertheless are so eagerly awaited: "I am in good health: Best wishes!"

I have ended; my pen flies no longer. But that melancholy I experienced a few hours ago is still with me, and gradually it increases, tempting me to abandon myself to it entirely. Most miserable of men! Am I too weak, then, boldly to face the crisis and to overcome it with an equal mind? It would indeed be true courage to grapple with it and triumph over it; the worst form of self indulgence would be merely to pander to it and take melancholy pleasure in my own suffering.

I jump to my feet, rush down the slope, leaping the shell-holes, and go from fire to fire, questioning, joking, inspecting the various dishes.

"Good-day, Roux! What are you grilling there?"

"You do not know, Lieutenant? Is it possible? It is a biscuit, pure and simple. Try them. But dip it in water before toasting it, if you want to make it really toothsome. Or dipped in milk, it is delicious. Better still is it if you split it in two and make a butter sandwich of it. In the early days, we were able to get fresh butter from the Amblonville farm. But to-day!…"

Presle, advancing with tremendous strides, comes running towards us from the top of the hill.

"I was looking for you, Lieutenant," he exclaims. "I thought you were still up there. A cyclist has just come to say that you are wanted at the paymaster's office. They are sending for all the officers, one after another…. It must be your turn now!"

The paymaster? Of course, this is the last day of the month!

And I am in such frame of mind that I am not at all ill-pleased I should have to go alone. Striding rapidly down the road, I amuse myself watching the larks settling and pecking away in the dust. They let me approach them until I am able to distinguish their sharp, black eyes, their slender claws and their quaint little crests. Then, with a flutter of feathers, a stroke of their wings, they flash away almost from beneath my feet. But they do not go far; lightly they glide down into the nearest field, perch on the top of some molehill, and with head on one side, tranquilly and mockingly watch me. When I have gone on far enough, they return to the road and settle on the spot from which I drove them.

It is midday when I leave the paymaster's office, my money safe in my pocket. I discover that the walk has made me hungry, but the prospect of returning to the valley to eat the inevitable boiled meat and cooked rice—it will already be more than half cold—does not please me. I find the prospect not at all inviting. A sudden longing for dishes dainty and rare, for savoury dishes to be masticated at leisure, seizes me. My liberty of the morning, the comparative freedom of action of which only a short time remains to me, is in itself so unusual and pleasurable a sensation, that I feel the occasion demands some adequate form of celebration. Had I known in advance what was going to befall, I would have made all the essential arrangements, fittingly to mark the occasion. Being a victim of the unforeseen, no choice remains to me; I must extemporize. And since the abnormal yearning for meats tender and juicy obsesses me, I must seek, solitary and alone, to satisfy it.

Fortune is good to me. A white house with sunlit faÇade attracts my attention. On a garden seat near the door an old man sits, placidly warming himself in the sunshine. No complications bar the way to complete mutual understanding. He invites me to step into a perfect little kitchen; and there his daughter-in-law makes me an omelette never to be forgotten. This is followed by smoked ham, which she cuts specially for me. I eat like a glutton; near my left hand reposes a long baton of new bread, to which I help myself at will. Again and again the old man replenishes my glass with Toul wine, rosy, sparkling and dry. The fresh ham on my plate has a sheen; before me, near my glass, in which the bubbles foam, there is a stone jar of golden jam.

And when the ham at last only too obviously reveals the force and verve of my attack, when the jam-pot is half emptied, I light my pipe with a sigh of deep satisfaction. It is I who have enjoyed these delicacies, I alone. Through half-closed eyes I watch the blue smoke mounting to the rafters, swamped in a sensation of physical well-being, and evoke a picture of my comrades back in the valley, sitting down to the eternal stew and cooked rice—something of remorse, I must confess it, mingles with my self-satisfaction!

Thursday, October 1st.

We received a surprise yesterday evening on returning to our quarters—the regimental band has been playing Two-Steps and dreamy valses on the village green. We had just unbuckled our straps before the barns when the first strains burst forth. The immediate effects of this unwonted clamour were somewhat remarkable. Less than a minute after one of the men had cried "There's a band!" the German centre had been broken! A minute later and we had made eighty thousand prisoners. By the time I arrived on the scene, the Russians were in Berlin. Outside the saw-mill I met an old dame who informed me with an air of great mystery: "That the Kaiser was dead of a stroke, but no one would be allowed to say anything about it until to-morrow!"

On investigation, however, I learn that this concert is not intended to celebrate a manifestation of national joy, but is the result of an idea of our Major. Battalion orders handed to me as I leave duly enlighten me. I read that: "The appearance of the regiment is slovenly" … that it "shows only too plainly the effects of a prolonged stay in the wooded regions where man displays a tendency to revert to a condition of nature" … that "it is essential to return by degrees to a more healthy and regulated style of living." So apparently a reasonable ration of music, Two-Steps and dreamy valses, is destined to tame for ever that ancestral savagery in us which the war has awakened.

And this morning at daybreak we are departing from the village once again to bury ourselves in those wooded regions where man becomes a wolf!

It is misty and the leading files of the battalion vanish from sight in a white cloud. The company preceding us is no more than a moving mass in which only the rifle barrels swaying above a crowd of heads can be distinguished. At a lesser distance forms are visible, all dull grey, but it is only when quite near that we can recognize different colours in the uniforms and see the men's breath as white puffs which quickly dissolve.

Amblonville, Mouilly, and then a narrow ravine. The slope we are mounting is covered with shrubs, hazel, cherry trees, dwarf oaks and a few big trees; at the bottom of the ravine is a lake of greenness which has retained its freshness despite the autumn. In it countless shell-holes form miniature archipelagos. The opposite slope is covered with a thinly-sown wood of pines.

The fog has disappeared and unveiled the sky. Idly I watch several of our men lounging near the pines. Three of them are sitting playing cards and smoking, two others standing behind them watch the game closely, commenting from time to time. A little higher up the slope a man is lying flat on his stomach, supporting his chin on his hands, and reading absorbedly, digging his toes in the soil the while.

I was watching, and I saw in all its brutal horror the thing that came to pass. A shell swept over the edge of the hollow, passing so close above us that we felt its breath in our faces, and dropped plumb in the centre of the peaceable group of card-players. We heard them cry aloud; then beheld two of them running madly. In the crater made by the shell the black smoke hung, and drifted for some time; little by little it disappeared. And when it was gone we saw a human trunk in bloody rags hanging between two branches of a pine. A second wounded man lay on the earth beside the mutilated legs of his comrade, and he was waving his arms and screaming. The stretcher-bearers came up at full speed.

I can see them now at the bottom of the ravine, carrying the wounded man on a stretcher; can follow their course through the high grass. And while they are making for the road, other men dig a grave in the hole dug by the shell. In a few minutes all is over; no deep hole is necessary to receive those poor human fragments!

I watch them get the soul-sickening dÉbris down from the tree, and gently place it in the hole, together with the two legs: then the earth falls in heavy lumps. Two branches to form a cross; a name, a date. How simple it all is! After our departure to-morrow others will come as smiling and indifferent before the constant menace of death as ourselves. And perhaps near that grave which the shell dug, other card-players will seat themselves on the moss, and throw down their cards and laugh amid the fragrant bluish smoke of their pipes.

Friday, October 2nd.

To Mouilly, all alone, hands in my pockets. I have been ordered to supervise the clearing up of the village, have all the rubbish buried, and hunt looters and deserters out of the houses.

I conscientiously accomplished this delicate mission of marshal, dustman, and police officer. I formed several fatigue-parties, each with a definite task. I sent out patrols and walked up and down the streets myself.

The results are praiseworthy. Bones, empty meat-tins and other indescribable things have disappeared beneath the earth. The roadway has been well brushed with birch brooms. Never before, not even in pre-war days, has the village been so aggressively clean. It looks as if it has been an object of tender care. Even the shattered roofs and holes in the walls now appear less desolate. Perhaps, however, I look on these things with a prejudiced eye; I am rather pleased with myself and my men; maybe that I exaggerate.

A dozen soldiers are kneeling side by side before a trough, bending over the soapy water, washing their linen in silence. But where is the washing and the babbling washerwomen of a year before? One hears nothing now but the slapping of palms against the wet clothes, and the noise of the trickling water wrung from them.

"Hullo, Pannechon? Almost finished?"

Pannechon looks up. Still kneeling and resting his hands on the inclined plank before him, he turns his head to look at me.

"Yes, Lieutenant. I have only this flannel waistcoat to finish. I have put everything to dry in the cupboard behind the chimney-piece in the house."

The house! He means the one that sheltered us last night. It resembles that in which we slept on the night of September 25th; it resembles all the other houses in the village; only certainly it ranks among the least dirty of them. In my frenzy of organization and cleansing I have had the greasy dishes washed which littered the chairs and the bed; I have scraped the stained table with a piece of glass; not even the kneading-trough have I forgotten. Moreover, I have put back the faded family photographs I found lying about in confusion; closed all the yawning drawers, and arranged in the linen-chest coarse shirts and wearing apparel, a riding coat, a green dress, and some chintzes. Pannechon has hung a cloth before the window, so that I am no longer compelled to look on empty window-frames and the shell-holes desolating the meadows.

Now that the door is closed and I am alone with him and Viollet, a taciturn and devoted lad, I no longer feel the depression which always overwhelms me at the sight of the desolated and shattered homes. This one, for the time being at least, is barred against the intrusion of passers-by. Peace has descended upon it; I do not want that peace to be disturbed. If anyone comes prying and poking his nose around the door, he will quickly find himself in the road again.

Sitting before the table smoking my pipe, I am writing and making notes of events worthy of remembrance. My pen runs well; my pipe draws well. From time to time the distant sound of guns makes the walls tremble and blows our impromptu curtain into the room. That troubles me but little, however; it signifies nothing to me. On the other hand, the crackling of the wood burning in the grate fascinates me and holds my attention. I love this song of the fire and the dancing of the flames. Pannechon and Viollet are sitting opposite each other beside the fireplace; Pannechon, with swollen cheeks, is blowing with all the force of his lungs through a long metal tube which branches at the end in the form of a lyre; his efforts send the glowing sparks up the chimney. Viollet is carefully covering some onions with hot cinders. The day is dying. The solid things about us grow more and more shadowy as twilight descends. The guns fall silent. It almost seems to me that the pendulum of the clock on the mantelshelf is going to start again, steadily and rhythmically marking the flight of the minutes.

All at once Pannechon jumps to his feet so violently that he overturns his chair. He rushes to the next room shouting:

"Fire! Fire! There's a fire!"

We run out, bumping against each other, to the door. A stifling smoke envelops us. We choke, we cough, we weep.

"The pump, the pump! There's a camp bucket here!…"

The pump creaks; the bucket fills; a steady stream is directed on the flames. Smoke swirls up in dense, choking clouds; we cough so violently that we almost vomit.

"The door! Shut the door!"

What idiot has just come in? There came a violent gust of air at the very moment when we were getting the fire under.

"Hullo!" says a voice. "What's all this about? You're making a bit of a hullabaloo, aren't you?"

It is Porchon.

"Come along, old man," I cry. "You must help if you wish to sleep here to-night. Pump, pump—like the devil!"

And the four of us fly about as madly as devils in holy water. The pump nearly bursts itself; we wallow in a black flood and tread on each other's toes; but little by little the clouds of smoke die away, the air becomes breathable, our eyes cease to run.

"Bring the candle from that table," I say to Pannechon, "and let's have a look at the damage."

The inquiry is short. There is no stonework behind the chimney-piece. One side of it formed the back of a cupboard with wooden doors, which was used for drying linen. The side had cracked and the flames had got through and set fire to the cupboard doors.

What about the linen inside? Has the worst happened?

"Pannechon, our linen?"

Pannechon smiles, Pannechon is well pleased with himself.

"Ah! Lieutenant, I'm a smart fellow. I had just got it away when the fire broke out. It was all aired—ah, no, there was an old pair of socks which were still wet, so I left them. Yes, there they are—socks no longer, but cinders! It must have been those that smothered us, together with a bundle of rags left at the bottom."

So everything is all right then. Porchon approaches the bed and caresses the eiderdown.

"Ah! old friend, but that was a narrow escape," he says affectionately. "You shall wrap us up snugly shortly." Then raising his voice, he addresses me: "Come along, it is time to mess. Do not forget that I bought some pork yesterday evening from that old man back in the valley. There are also some apple fritters, and still one more of Presle's famous fowls."

Saturday, October 3rd.

Letters at last! Forty letters at once! And the postman tells me there are still others to follow! I plunge into the mass. I read voraciously, until I am a being intoxicated. I take them from the heap, just as they come to hand, slit the envelope open with my finger, and absorb the contents of the whole letter at once. How short a time it takes, after all, to read forty letters!

Then I re-read them slowly, line by line, as one sips an exquisite liqueur of whose bouquet one's palate never tires. My letters no longer swamp me; I select now, guided by a sure instinct.

And of all those letters, I preserve a few only—those each separate word of which bears a message of hope and encouragement for me. They are the more intimate, hopeful, brighter ones; they are the letters for which I have looked so long in vain. Having read and re-read them, I place them where, at any moment, in any place, they will be available. Meanwhile, because of them and through them, I have become more confident of myself….

Since the dawn, we have been in a steep-sided ravine, whose fresh green is most refreshing to the eyes. The guns are firing irregularly. A German battery is shelling some position out of sight; the shells fly over us at a great height, singing queerly and accompanied by the usual rustling of a heavy object flying through the air.

The older and seasoned soldiers laugh constantly while they banter and twit some new recruits who have just rejoined the colours, and who, each time a shell sails past, search the sky with anxious eyes, seeking to follow its course.

"Don't let them worry you, my boy! They are only rubbish!"

"They never explode, those big shells, as you will see for yourself. At least, that's what we have been told."

"Ah, lÀ lÀ! Are you sure?…"

"You shut up and leave them alone! You want to try and make them believe that they do explode, perhaps. Don't believe them! They are only trying to frighten you!"

Another man good-naturedly adds:

"I shouldn't take any notice of what they say. One says this; another that! Let them go on talking and wait and see for yourselves. You won't have long to wait!"

A true prophecy that, for we leave for the advance posts in the woods. The march is a pleasant one. We are not shelled; what rifle fire there is, is far away; we hear the crackling distinctly, but no bullets go humming past us. We march along in single file by one of those damp tracks where the sunlight, streaming through the leaves, takes to itself a greenish hue. Porchon is busy amusing himself by letting small branches fly back at me as he moves onwards. With a jump I place myself alongside him and so stop his little game.

"Have you seen the Captain of the 8th?" I ask him. "He has come back with his cheek still in bandages. His wound cannot be properly healed yet."

"Yes, I have seen him! He certainly doesn't make a fuss about his wounds!"

"What do you think of the new men?… Do they impress you well?"

"Er … yes!… Oh, yes!"

Porchon's tone is doubtful; he appears to be rather preoccupied.

"What is wrong with them?" I ask. "I can only speak for my own section of course; but they have at least sent me two corporals and a sergeant who seem to me sound, well-meaning sort of fellows."

"Well-meaning enough, I grant you. You can always expect that. But it is true I am rather worried. You see, the new contingents seem to be comprised of nothing but non-coms., sergeants and corporals. What's the good of them? However hard you try, you can't be everywhere at the same time. Of course, while you are looking after your right, the left, unsupported, gives way…. I am sorry indeed Roux has been sent to hospital!"

"What! The Adjutant in hospital?"

"Yes! The day before yesterday. He'll be out of harness for some time. A good section leader lost!"

Two cannon shots, thundering out almost simultaneously, impel us to look up quickly. Those shells were not 75's or 105's. And where are the guns? They seemed to be under our very noses, yet they are not to be seen. Thirty yards away some gunners are coming and going, busying themselves with some business whose nature it is difficult to grasp at a glance. We approach them and, suddenly, almost at our feet, we see the guns, admirably hidden beneath a pile of brushwood, with a palisade of branches all round. An artificial thicket is the result, capable of deceiving the eye ten paces away.

"Oh, that's something like!" I exclaim. "It is an artistic triumph. I am going to congratulate the gunners."

The moment, however, I get near the guns, and slightly in front of them, a deafening, stunning explosion takes place. The rush of air almost knocks me over; my head seems to have been shattered and my ears tingle painfully. A gunner laughingly calls out to me:

"Hallo, Lieutenant! Have you heard our 90's yet?"

So these are the 90's! One of my men growls bitterly:

"What idiocy! To put these mechanics here with their two machines simply to make a noise! They would have something better to think about than making us jump if they had to go and do some fighting!"

We are in the heart of the wood. We scale a slope and descend the further side. Everyone is silent, a prey to that instinctive feeling which proximity to the Boches causes. It can hardly be described as uneasiness; rather is it a complex sensation which compels action even before the impulse behind it has formed in the mind. One instinctively walks on tiptoe, holds one's bayonet to prevent it rattling, suppresses a cough. It is as if someone had said: "Be careful! I can smell the Germans!" There are, of course, some men who do not feel this sensation as keenly as others, but the soldier who is a complete stranger to it is a rarity; time only quickens it, and with some it is an unfailing indication of the enemy's presence.

How thick these woods are! Beneath the giant trees whose lower branches begin to spread at least sixty feet above the earth, the exuberant undergrowth runs riot. It stretches across and over the path in wonderful confusion, branches twining with branches, until they seem designedly to have combined to check our progress. Thick and flexible, we have to thrust them aside with our hands before we can go on; while tenacious offshoots, wrapping themselves about our legs, send us stumbling constantly.

To right and left are green depths, as far as the eye can reach. Green, too, is the moss, fresh and velvety in the shadows; tinged with russet and gold where the sun has caught it. Green are the trunks of the age-old trees, with the humid, unhealthy greenness which betokens rot; green the countless leaves, changing and varying with the caprice of the breeze; green, yet gold-flecked, are the leaves already touched by autumn's finger.

I raise my head while we march along, seeking the sky's limpid blue for relief; but I can see only a few patches of the heavens, tranquil and serene above the restless quivering of the woods, which lighten the way for us, prisoners of this prodigious multitude of trees, of this unpitying sea of undergrowth.

We have almost fallen into the trenches, which open unexpectedly at our feet. The heads of men appear above the soil; then the men hoist themselves out of the deep cutting, with the aid of their rifles, and the relief is effected, very swiftly and without noise, in broad daylight.

These trenches are splendid, deeply sunk in the chalk, with low parapets supported by wattles. Above them, a roof of leaves droops almost down to the parapet, leaving only a narrow opening through which we can survey the terrain, without being seen. It is not possible to see far, because the visible field of fire extends only eighteen feet or so beyond our rifles, thirty feet at the most at the widest part. This zone, too, is covered with the stumps of felled trees. Beyond it there are more, as dense as those behind us, and therefore more redoubtable than the Germans they hide. The terrain slopes steeply away from us for a hundred yards or so, then rises again to a summit, which marks the horizon a mile away. The side of this rising is covered with undergrowth and, here and there, high trees. The sinking sun bathes the wood in a crimson light, which ruddies the leaves on the higher branches of the trees. And while the pungent odour of the woods rather oppresses me, my eyes weary not, until the darkness of the night extinguishes the colours, of contemplating the trees, which seem to touch the sky, whose leaves tremble in the failing light and which appear beautiful beyond description on this fading autumnal day.

Sunday, October 4th.

Porchon has reassured himself. While we sit, plunging our pocket-knives in the same tin of beef, he enunciates considerations which have tended to induce this happy frame of mind.

"When we arrived here yesterday, I don't mind confessing that the place gave me a cold shiver up the spine. It appeared to me a cutthroat sort of hole, this little corner. However, I have reconnoitred the ground, and on my return I have found myself as comfy as formerly I had been disturbed. Have you tried to walk through the thicket over there?"

"Yes."

"Did you get far?"

"I gave it up after advancing a few steps."

"Naturally. I, too, attempted it, and, like you, decided it was better to abandon it. Under the circumstances, then, there seemed nothing for me to do but to obey the advice I received when we arrived—to guard the clearings and send out patrols from time to time. A very nice type, the lieutenant who was in command here! He saw me raiding his cigarette-papers, and in a flash offered me the book. 'You want some? Take those, then.' It is a long time since I have been so well off…. Ah, well! What do you wish for most? I only hope we have a night as calm as that of yesterday, a day of fine weather such as this, and return to our quarters for dinner—

"'The valley of my dream where I sleep in a bed.'

"You notice, old man, I possess some genius for improvisation! Meanwhile, however, my bit of foresight should carry us on comfortably until the 8th. After that, who knows? But it is at least something to be grateful for to have four days before one."

"Touch wood!" I say. "Touch wood! We are not back in the valley yet, nor in our beds."

A quartermaster coming up at this moment interrupts us. It appears that one of us two must go to the battalion headquarters to receive instructions. I set out, the messenger acting as guide.

The major's dug-out is situated near a fairly wide cross road. A forest alley prolongs to right and left a level perspective; the sun, which at this hour is directly overhead, appears as a magnificent avenue cutting right through the heart of the forest. The company in reserve is stationed here, but not a man is visible in the sunlight. When one gets nearer, however, heads pop up out of a trench among the brambles which cover it. In some astonishment, I ask myself what inconceivable folly has led these men to hide themselves in their trench on such a day, and why they watch me passing with such astonishment in their eyes.

I encounter several old comrades at the entrance of the hut in which the Captain is lying sick. It appears that an attack by the Boches is anticipated. Consequently, certain dispositions must be arranged before nightfall. I take down all instructions in my note-book, and after a few words of general advice we each depart in our respective directions.

I was approaching our trenches, walking musingly through the clearing, watching the splashes of sunlight playing over the moss, when a strange sound impelled me to halt transfixed. The sound took the form of light, aerial music, as silvery and as transparent as the sky which carried its waves to me. That welcome music had wings; it went high, higher even than the great trees, higher than the trilling of the lark. There were instants when it seemed to draw far away, being heard then only with difficulty; then it recovered force and sounded clear and distinct though limpid and immaterial. A breath of wind shook the leaves and brought a flood of the melody down to me, before it was dispersed far and wide.

It was the voice of bells in some village church.

I stood there, unmoving, listening to this chant of the bells wafting through the woods, where night and day men faced one another, seeking to kill each other.

Their message was not sad. From the heights of the heavens wherein it resounds it spreads widely over earth and men alike. The Germans in their trenches hear it, as we hear it, but the bells speak not to them as they speak to us.

To us they say:

"Hope, sons of France! I am near you, the voice of all the firesides you have left behind. To each one of you I bring a vision of that corner of the earth where the heart remains. Confidence be with you for ever, sons of France, confidence and strength for ever. I sing the life immortal of the Fatherland."

To them they say:

"Madmen who believed that France could die! Hear me! Above the little church, whose stained-glass windows lie in fragments on the pavements, the belfry still stands. It is the belfry that sends me to you, laughing and mocking. Through me it is the village that defies you. I see…. I see … whatever you have done, I see. Whatever you may do, I shall see. I am not afraid of you. Because I know that the day will come when the cock on the steeple, staring unflinchingly towards the far horizon, will see you in desperate flight, while the innumerable bodies of your slain shall lie thick over the land!"

Night. Letters have been brought to me. One of the envelopes contains sorrow for me. I have learnt that a friend is dead.

And I welcome the darkness. Its blackness cannot be too black for me; I have even hidden myself at the bottom of the trench, because a diffused light wanders amid the boles of the age-old trees before it; and welcome also is the silence of night. Near me an occasional furtive movement reveals the presence of men who are watching. Nothing else. Not even firing in the far distance. I open my eyes in the blackness and see again the living face of my friend, frank, eyes clear and loyal, mouth slightly disdainful, beneath a closely-clipped moustache.

The news has shocked me greatly. A torpor steals over me; the blood beats violently in my temples; I am fevered. And suddenly I hear a murmur, very low, very far away, indefinable. Am I dreaming? Two soldiers, perhaps, gossiping somewhere close at hand. Yes, they are the voices of men I hear, but now they are silent. My head is burning, and still the blood thunders in my temples without a pause. Then the murmur recommences, the same as it was before. It increases; someone is speaking. I cannot distinguish the words, yet the voice is familiar to me: I know it well. But how distant it is! It seems to resound far away in space, beyond the reach of my senses; it rises from obscure depths within me; it awakens in me what is most intimate in the dead past! Low and soft, it is the voice of my friend!

"Lieutenant!"

That is a raucous voice which causes me to raise my head.

"Lieutenant!—Lieutenant!"

"What's the matter?"

"You hear that firing away to the left?"

Firing!—Firing!—— It is true; the woods; the night; the advance posts; the attack that was anticipated…. A few stars shine between the trees; it is very cold; a branch creaks, while somewhere away to our left resounds a prolonged and continuous crackling, which echoes from one end of the ravine to the other. Can they be fighting further away down the line? Is this the attack?

I leave the trench and walk slowly from one end of the line to the other. My men are standing at attention, their rifles resting on the parapet; the non-coms. are in their places; we are ready. Gropingly I enter the narrow passage-way opening into the undergrowth away in front and beyond our trenches. At the end of this, the clearing starts. I count my steps, eight, nine, ten; here is a giant beech, marking the entrance. Little by little my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. I walk forward more confidently, almost quickly. I should have arrived at my destination by now. Three times I whistle cautiously, three times a whistle rings out in reply, and at the same time a fugitive ray of light gleams on a bayonet in the clearing and I can make out a dark figure. The sentries are keeping good guard!

"Nothing before you, Chabeau?"

"Nothing, Lieutenant!"

"Who is with you?"

"Gilon."

"That's all right. Keep your eyes and your ears open, but do not start firing if only a leaf rustles. Remember there is wire before you to which we have fastened empty meat-tins with a few pebbles inside. A Boche has only to touch the wire to set up a deuce of a rattle. Also, do not fire if you should hear crackers going off to the right or left. Just guard your particular corner to the very best of your ability. Understand?"

"I understand, Lieutenant."

I am just going to leave him, when a gun fires a little behind us, not twenty yards away; we saw a flame spurt out of the muzzle. A moment later there is a second report; then the thunder of a squall, and bullets rush and whistle a short distance away.

"Lieutenant? You heard?"

A cry has vibrated through the night, coming from far away to the right, and as if it had been intended for us alone, it echoes and re-echoes through the trees around us, with poignant, tragic force.

"To arms!"

A glimpse of light, quickly extinguished, passes from one end of the French trenches to the other. A crisp outbreak rends the darkness; branches, bullet-shattered, fall to the earth. We have flung ourselves flat, face downwards. Fortunately our men are firing high; the slope of the earth saves us. Still lying flat, we crawl with difficulty through an entanglement of brambles. Chabeau and Gilon are so close to me that I can hear their laboured breathing. Often a whining bullet grazes us; but most of them fly above us right across the hollow, to embed themselves in the further side.

"We had better shout out, Lieutenant," Chabeau suggests.

"No, no! Follow me!"

I recollect that between two stretches of trenches there remains an unexcavated interval, and it is towards that spot I set my crawling course, followed by my two men. I peer into the darkness intently, and gradually my eyes acquire an amazing keenness. Jets of rifle fire serve to guide me. They flash out constantly on the same line, in the middle of which there remains a patch of darkness. We are directly opposite that patch, which represents our haven. More bullets sing and whine about us, falling harmlessly to either side. Chabeau, with his mouth close to my ear, says:

"I think we are all right now, Lieutenant, but we have had a warm time, haven't we?"

"Rather!" I reply. "And it is not yet finished. Some terrified idiot may still serve us dirtily, when he sees us coming from the same direction as the Boches!"

The two echo in chorus:

"Ah, yes!… Ah, yes!… It is possible!…"

"Wait for me here without moving an inch," I command. "I am going forward alone to try and rejoin the men. When I have warned them, I will return for you."

I rise deliberately and dash with all speed across the open space separating me from the trenches. How easy it was! The noise of the rifles changes abruptly; when I sprang to my feet, the firing sounded harsh, almost sharp; now the voice of the bullets is deadened and dulled. A few leaps suffice to carry me well to the rear of the trenches. But how of those two others, lying flat on their faces in the open? Each second is of urgent importance.

"Lieutenant!—Lieutenant!—who is there?"

A big man rushes up to me, stares through the darkness into my face, and then:

"Ah! So it is you, Lieutenant! But that lifts a weight off my heart! You are not hurt? I told myself that you could not be wounded. I knew you had gone out; I held up my fire and no one about me fired, and we were directly in front of the cutting. But, name of a dog! how the time dragged!"

The man who addresses me in this way is Souesme, one of my sergeants. This is my opportunity.

"Listen to me, Souesme. Gilon and Chabeau are still out there before the trenches. I am going out to fetch them in. Meanwhile, you remain here and wait for us."

A few moments later I am safely back again among my men, accompanied by the two men and the sergeant. It is as Souesme affirmed. My men on the right, where the sergeant was stationed, have not fired a shot. Still further to the right, however, in the neighbouring trench, the spitting of the rifles does not cease for a second. The fusillade, disordered, breathless, betrays the anxiety of the men. And my half section to the left is creating a similar ridiculous din.

The Germans are replying vigorously, but their efforts are just as wild and valueless as our own. Almost all the bullets fly high over us towards the top of the slope behind us. They must be falling much more thickly among the company in reserve than they are here. Only every now and again does a stray shot tatter the leaves which form the roof of our trench or send up the pebbles before our eyes.

As speedily as possible, I get among the men composing the left wing of my section. They are still firing madly and blindly. I roughly shake one or two of them and command volley fire. They obey me. And at each word of command others imitate their example, while the resulting volley increases and my voice carries further and further. In this way, I gradually regain grip of my men. Then, with them well in hand, I let one more volley go, before shouting the "Cease fire!" The word passes from man to man right along the line, and peace descends on my trench. The example seems contagious. In the trenches right and left a similar command rings out and silence descends.

The Boches also put a term to their fusillade. Two or three bullets still fly amid the trees, fired from one knows not where, but that is all.

The smoke clears away, enabling us to see more or less distinctly. To our fevered imaginations the underwood before the trenches appears now to be less distant than earlier in the night; we think, too, we can detect dark forms coming and going amidst it.

The silence endures—a silence so intense as to seem almost palpable. It swallows us as the floodgates of a mill-pool engulf the waters. I strain my ears to catch the slightest sound. The woods, lashed no longer by the frenzy and fury of man, regain their usual mystery. Breezes almost imperceptibly rustle the leaves and set the shoots of the brambles swaying; a little round living thing appears suddenly on top of the parapet, glides to a corner of the trench, climbs a stake and vanishes amid the leaves which form our roof—a field-mouse searching for scraps!

From time to time the breeze momentarily increases, until the whole of the woods are alive with rustlings and tremblings. It comes from the north behind us, and is bitterly cold and biting; then it passes onwards, awakening the trees from their slumber right up to the hilltop. We feel like lost souls, surrounded by a thousand hidden menaces, so weak and fearful that the advent of real danger would surely find us unarmed against it! Some prowling night beast moves in the thicket.

"There are Boches there right enough!" a man exclaims.

"They must be plotting some pretty mischief seeing how quiet they keep," adds a second. "They are stealing up one by one, and when there is a sufficient number of them, they'll rush down on top of us in a flash. We shall be done for!"

Another man seizes my arm impulsively and says in a low tone:

"There are two of them there—quite close—behind that bush. I can see them right enough! They have helmets; they are standing close to one another. Oh, Lieutenant, we must fire!"

I am about to reply when someone moves behind me. A man is bending down towards the trench calling:

"Lieutenant! Lieutenant!"

"I am here. What do you want?"

"Ah, Lieutenant, you will have to remain all night. The wood is full of Boches. From our side, we can see them hiding not ten yards away. We must fire…."

"No, return to your place instantly! I forbid you to fire, do you understand? You will fire only when I give the word."

But still another man approaches me. I recognize him as Boulier, one of my best men, a stolid, cool-headed peasant, who has been fighting since the first day of the war. He jumps down to the trench beside me and says in a calm voice:

"Lieutenant, I have marked two Boches spying upon us. They are hidden behind that big beech at the entrance to the cutting over there. There are hundreds and thousands of them a little further back. In a moment or two they will charge. But the two of whom I tell you—it is certain they are there. Look for yourself!"

Despite myself, I look. Boulier continues in a babble:

"Behind the beech, nowhere else. One is taller than the other, or else one of them must be stooping. Every now and again the big one bends forward, as if stretching his neck to look about. The other keeps still. Ah, the scum!…"

Intently I watch the beech tree pointed out by Boulier. What he affirms is true, perhaps. I listen calmly to all he has to say, his face so close that I can feel his warm breath on mine:

"There, the other has moved a little; the big one wants to speak to him. He is stooping down. Good! There you are, he is rising again. Ah, the camels!"

Peering so constantly into the blackness wearies my eyes. Lights begin to dance before them; rings of flame begin to whirl vertiginously. I close my eyes for a moment. And when I open them again, I can see behind the beech two unmoving human beings, bending low in a listening attitude. I shake myself, look at my hands, at the wattles supporting the parapet, and then once more at the beech. I can see nothing now but beeches and leaves.

"There are no Boches there," I tell Boulier. "You also have lost your head."

I jump up over the front of the trench. The man calls me back.

"Lieutenant! Lieutenant! Don't go! You are going to get yourself hurt!…"

At the first step I stumble over the stump of a tree and almost fall. When I have regained my balance, I can see the two Germans behind the tree again. And on the instant I detect them, a conviction seizes me that they too have seen me. A storm of fear assails me. My heart seems to become empty of blood; my flesh grows icy cold and trembles violently. In desperation I get grip of myself, fighting back an impulse to cry out aloud or to take to my heels; the effort of will causes my nails to enter my palms.

Drawing my revolver, I continue to advance. Instead, however, of moving without haste in complete self-possession, I rush blindly and furiously towards the right.

Suddenly I find myself amid the undergrowth and stop. Turning, I find the beech immediately behind me so close that its roots protrude from the earth at my feet. I run fingers up and down the bark, stamp on the very spot where I thought I had seen the two Boches; I push on into the clearing, beating the bushes to right and left. I find nothing, nothing at all. And I the leader of those men, I to whom that night had been confided a portion of the front behind which lay France and its well-being, I had almost abandoned myself to a lunatic's frenzy. Panic had made of me a brute among brutes. I was grateful now for the darkness, which veiled me and my actions from the eyes of my soldiers. When I returned to the trench Boulier on the parapet extended his hand towards me. I jumped down beside him. I had nothing to say to him.

A few minutes later a volley bursts out from the opposite lines, to which our men reply, and the fusillade starts again.

This time the Boches fire lower. Every instant bullets bury themselves in the earth about us, striking sharply. I hear one of my corporals swear when a bullet smashes the upper part of his arm. I am master of myself again now. No longer are my senses subject to illusion; lucidly, one after the other, I check my impressions; all my confidence returns to me.

Above all can I hear the crackling of the enemy's rifles. They sound sharply, exactly opposite us; but the bullets seem to come from a great distance, which serves to thin them out. I recall Vauxmarie, the firing at thirty yards, then at ten, then at point-blank range. The present fusillade is not like that, and I feel sure that up to the present the Germans have not yet left their trenches. More than that, I feel convinced they will not leave them. On the other side of the ravine, taking cover in a trench similar to ours, behind a similar breastwork, they, too, tremble at every rustling of the leaves. The night was the same for all men in the wood; like ourselves, the Boches were afraid.

A star shell rises high in the sky and bursts into startling resplendency; so strong was the light with which it flooded the earth that the shadow of each branch, of each leaf, was projected in minute perfection of detail upon the whitened surface of the parapet, on our faces, on our hands.

The star streamed through the heavens until a gust of wind made it waver; then it commenced to descend slowly and leisurely until finally dying from sight. And then the darkness was more impenetrable than ever.

The fusillade had burst out from the enemy's trenches more violently than ever the moment the wan, pale light of the star irradiated the earth. Now the darkness has again descended, the firing does not decrease. Rather the whistling of bullets increases. Other star shells rise and burst; on each occasion I see the rank of my men, one pressing against the other, necks extended, watching closely the course of the star.

A bullet strikes a metal object behind me, doubtless some old water-flask. The sound brings me to attention again. I listen to the bullets, their whining, the dead thud they make against the trunks of the trees, the lash-like hissing they make when flying far towards the trenches of the reserve, the long-drawn, the musical note of those flying still higher and passing over the hilltop into space.

The steps of someone approaching are heard. Someone is coming, walking evenly and steadily, through the mortal hail. I see the man is erect; he is following the line of the trenches; from time to time he halts and bends a little, as though to speak to those in the trench, well sheltered from the shots. Then he rises and, quite erect, continues on his way, thrusting aside the brambles with a stick in his hand. In this way, with the same appearance of indifference and nonchalance, he passes through the leaden tempest raging about the terrain which separates us from the neighbouring trench. A few yards from me he seems to hesitate, moves back a little while looking about him, then in a low voice he calls my name.

"I am here," I say. "Can you hear me? Come towards my voice."

And Porchon, seating himself tranquilly on the parapet, his legs in the trench, his head and body exposed to the bullets, offers me his hand, saying:

"Good evening, old man."

And there he remains, joking and laughing and jeering at the fears of the men, which had not abated since sunset.

"You know Timmie, the deaf man, he saw about four hundred Germans in a heap. I took him by the arm and dragged him over towards the wood. He fought like a man possessed. I had to release him at last, as he would have screamed. And so I went forward all alone; and this cursed Timmie said—yes, my boy, he said: 'Oh! Lieutenant, God permits you to walk over there!'"

He lowered his voice to tell me that one of the sentries had been wounded by his comrades when the firing just started. He commenced to laugh again, relating how a sergeant, seeing him walking along the parapet when the firing was heaviest, began to call himself indescribable things, jumped out of the trench and swore he would remain outside until daybreak, and only after enormous trouble and threats of punishment had Porchon induced him to get down again with his men. He further confided in me that he was rather perturbed at the shortage of cartridges and that he had dispatched a messenger to the commander for a further supply.

"I should not fire unless it becomes absolutely urgent," he said. "A strong Boche patrol entered the ravine a short time ago, when the star shells went up. I know it has returned now. Butrel has been to see. They won't budge again to-night. This firing means nothing. Let it pass."

With a quick jump he came to his feet again.

"Listen to me," I cried. "I am going with you."

He refused decidedly. "No, no! Your place is here. You must remain."

I watched him move away towards the left, halt several times again and seat himself to talk more easily. As soon as the men saw him they said to one another:

"It is Lieutenant Porchon."

In this way his progress is announced, causing calmness and confidence right along the line.

At last he returns and jumps down into the trench between Boulier and myself.

"Ouf!" he exclaimed, "but things were looking rather nasty with us. I believe I was right in making my little tour. Half-past two in the morning; time is drawing on. All will go well now until daylight."

Boulier suddenly exclaimed:

"All the same, Lieutenant, it is not an ordinary thing that you have done. There were a thousand chances of your being wounded. And that would have been my fault, the fault of we good-for-nothings. Yes, it would have been our fault—don't let us talk about it!"

"To every man his business," replied Porchon. "If I had been you, Boulier, I would not have risked my skin as I have done. Just reflect a little, and you will understand."

Then, laughing still that laugh of a twenty-year-old boy, he taps me on the shoulder and says:

"To-day is the 5th, the day of our relief. Unless I am very much mistaken we shall sleep to-night in our beds. Good-bye for the moment. I am going back to my men."

Boulier, near me, his elbows on the parapet, watched him vanish amid the shadows. And he repeated to himself softly and without ceasing:

"Ah! what a man!… What a man! Heavens!… What a man!"

An intense emotion seemed to grip him by the throat, and the feeling in his voice shows that he is stirred to the heart's depth.

"Ah! What a man!… What a man!"

And that was all he could say.

Monday, October 5th.

Porchon brings me some news. When the quartermaster came to announce that the relief would take place this evening, he confided in him that we were going to change our position. Porchon hums gaily:

"You will perceive," he cries, "that my latest effort as an improviser is more conspicuous than ever. Those words do none the less adequately express my meaning because they were sung. The woods bore one; they suffocate one; one can see nothing; soon now we shall have a plain before us. Tell me what you will think on finding yourself perched on the side of a hill, with the summit, which you must take, whatever the cost, before your eyes? It will be exciting at least! And then it is so clear and distinct. One understands what is required of one. Ah! but we're going to have gay days over there: days of saps, of mine warfare, of assaults."

"Is it far from here?" I ask.

"Not very far. A few miles away to the east. It is just before the heights, a snug little corner in a valley. I love its name, because it has such a clear and open sound. Positively, it will give one real pleasure to fight in such a place."

"And this name?" I ask.

"Esparges!"

THE END

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.