Time passed very slowly. I raised my arm to listen to my wrist-watch, but couldn't hear it. Too many shells!

I knelt cautiously in my hole, and, looking over the edge, counted my section. There were but eighteen men. The Collettes, both corporals, were on the extreme left. Next came Capdeveille, Dowd, Zinn, Seeger, Scanlon, King, Soubiron, Dubois, Corporal Mettayer, Haeffle, Saint-Hilaire, Schneli, De Sumera, Corporal Denis, Bur-bekkar, and Birchler. On my left, two paces in the rear of the section, were Neumayer, Corporal Fourrier, and Sergeant Fourrier. Both these were supernumeraries. The second sergeant was over with Section II. I began now to realize our losses. Fully two thirds of my section were killed or wounded.

I wanted information from Corporal Denis regarding the men of his squad. Throwing a lump of dirt at him to attract his attention, I motioned to him to roll over to the side of his hole and make a place for me. Then, with two quick jumps I landed alongside him. As I dropped we noticed spurts of dust rising from the dirt-pile in front of the hole and smiled. The Germans were too slow that time. Putting my lips to his ears, I shouted my questions and got my information.

This hole was quite large enough to accommodate both of us, so I decided to stay with him awhile. Corporal Denis still had bread and cheese and shared it with me. We lunched in comfort.

Having finished, we rolled cigarettes. I had no matches, and as he reached his cigarette to me to light mine, he jumped almost to his feet, rolled on his face, and with both hands clasped to his face, tried to rise, but couldn't. I've seen men who were knocked out in the squared ring do the same thing. With heads resting on the floor, they try to get up. They get up on their knees and seem to try to lift their heads, but can't. Denis tugged and tugged, without avail. I knelt alongside him and forced his hands from his face. He was covered with blood spurting out of a three-inch gash running from the left eye down to the corner of the mouth. A steel splinter had entered there and passed under the left ear. He must stay in the trench until nightfall.

I reached for his emergency dressing and as I made the motion felt a blow in the right shoulder. As soon as I had got Denis tied up and quiet, I unbuttoned my coat and shirt and picked a rifle-ball out of my own shoulder. The wound was not at all serious and bled but little. I congratulated myself, but wondered why the ball did not penetrate; and then I caught sight of Denis's rifle lying over the parapet and showing a hole in the woodwork. The ball seemed to have passed through the magazine of the rifle, knocked out one cartridge, and then hit me.

When I was ready to return to my own hole, I rose a little too high and the Germans turned loose with a machine gun, but too high. I got back safely and lay down. It was getting very monotonous. To pass the time, I dug my hole deeper and larger, placing the loose dirt in front in a quarter-circle, until I felt perfectly safe against anything except a direct hit by a shell. There is but one chance in a thousand of that happening.

The day passed slowly and without mishap to my section. As night fell, one half of the section stayed on the alert four hours, while the other half slept. The second sergeant had returned and relieved me at twelve, midnight. I pulled several handfuls of grass, and with that and two overcoats I had stripped from dead Germans during the night, I made a comfortable bed and lay down to sleep. The bank was not uncomfortable. I was very tired, and dozed off immediately.

Suddenly I awoke in darkness. Everything was still, and I could hear my watch ticking, but over every part of me there was an immense leaden weight. I tried to rise, and couldn't move. Something was holding me and choking me at the same time. There was no air to breathe. I set my muscles and tried to give a strong heave. As I drew in my breath, my mouth filled with dirt. I was buried alive!

It is curious what a man thinks about when he is in trouble. Into my mind shot memories of feats of strength performed. Why, I was the strongest man in the section. Surely I could lift myself out, I thought to myself, and my confidence began to return. I worked the dirt out of my mouth with the tip of my tongue and prepared myself mentally for the sudden heave that would free me. A quick inhalation, and my mouth filled again with dirt. I could not move a muscle under my skin. And then I seemed to be two people. The "I" who was thinking seemed to be at a distance from the body lying there.

My God! Am I going to die stretched out in a hole like this? I thought.

Through my mind flashed a picture of the way I had always hoped to die—the way I had a right to die: face to the enemy and running toward him. Why, that was part of a soldier's wages. I tried to shout for help, and more dirt entered my mouth! I could feel it gritting way down in my throat. My tongue was locked so I could not move it. I watched the whole picture. I was standing a little way off and could hear myself gurgle. My throat was rattling, and I said to myself, "That's the finish!" Then I grew calm. It wasn't hurting so much, and somehow or other I seemed to realize that a soldier had taken a soldier's chance and lost. It wasn't his fault. He had done the best he could. Then the pain all left me and the world went black. It was death.

Then somebody yelled, "Hell! He bit my finger." I could hear him.

"That's nothing," said a voice I knew as Collette's. "Get the dirt out of his mouth."

Again a finger entered my throat, and I coughed spasmodically.

Some one was working my arms backward, and my right shoulder hurt me. I struggled up, but sank to my knees and began coughing up dirt.

"Here," says Soubiron, "turn round and spit that dirt on your parapet. It all helps." The remark made me smile.

I was quite all right now, and Soubiron, Collette, Joe, and Marcel returned to their holes. The Red Cross men were picking something out of the hole made by a 250-millimetre, they told me. It was the remnant of Corporal and Sergeant Fourrier, who had their trench to my left. It seems that a ten-inch shell had entered the ground at the edge of my hole, exploded a depth of two metres, tearing the corporal and the sergeant to pieces, and kicking several cubic metres of dirt into and on top of me. Soubiron and the Collettes saw what had happened, and immediately started digging me out. They had been just in time. It wasn't long before my strength began to come back. Two stretcher-bearers came up to carry me to the rear, but I declined their services. There was too much going on. I dug out the German overcoats, recovered some grass, and, bedding myself down in the crater made by the shell, began to feel quite safe again. Lightning never strikes twice in the same spot.

However, that wasn't much like the old-fashioned lightning. The enemy seemed to have picked upon my section. The shells were falling thicker and closer. Everybody was broad awake now, and all of us seemed to be waiting for a shell to drop into our holes. It was only a question of time before we should be wiped out. Haeffle called my attention to a little trench we all had noticed during the daytime, about forty metres in front of us. No fire had come from there, and it was evidently quite abandoned.

I took Haeffle and Saint-Hilaire with me and quietly crawled over to the trench, round the end of it, and started to enter at about the middle.

Then all of a sudden a wild yell came out of the darkness in front of us.

"Franzosen! Die Franzosen!"

We couldn't see anything, nor they either. There might have been a regiment of us, or of them for that matter. I screeched out in German, "HÄnde hoch!" and jumped into the trench followed by my two companions. As we crouched in the bottom, I yelled again, "HÄnde hoch oder wir schiessen!"

The response was the familiar "Kameraden! Kameraden!" Haeffle gave an audible chuckle.

Calling again on my German, I ordered the men to step out of the trench with hands held high, and to march toward our line. I assured the poor devils we wouldn't hurt them. They thought there was a division of us, more or less, and I don't know how much confidence they put in my assurance. Anyhow, as they scrambled over the parapet, I counted six of them prisoners to the three of us. Haeffle and Saint-Hilaire escorted them back and also took word to the second sergeant to let the section crawl, one after the other, up this trench to where I was.

One by one the men came on, crawling in single file, and I put them to work, carefully and noiselessly reversing the parapet. This German trench was very deep, with niches cut into the bank at intervals of one metre, permitting the men to lie down comfortably.

It was then that I happened to feel of my belt. One of the straps had been cut clean through and my wallet, which had held two hundred and sixty-five francs, had been neatly removed. Some one of my men, who had risked his life for mine with a self-devotion that could scarcely be surpassed, had felt that his need was greater than mine. Whoever he was, I bear him no grudge. Poor chap, if he lived he needed the money—and that day he surely did me a good turn. Besides, he was a member of the Legion.

I placed sentries, took care to find a good place for myself, and was just dropping off to sleep as Haeffle and Saint-Hilaire returned and communicated to me the captain's compliments and the assurance of a "citation."

I composed myself to sleep and dropped off quite content.