Not all the soldiers are as a rule kept ready to give battle. If no attack is expected or intended, only sentries occupy the trench. About three yards apart a man is posted behind his protective shield of steel. Nevertheless all the men are in the trench. The sentries keep their section under a continual fire, especially when it is cold and dark. The fingers get warm when one pulls the trigger. Of course, one cannot aim in the darkness, and the shots are fired at random. The sentry sweeps his section so that no hostile patrol can approach, for he is never safe in that thicket. Thus it happens that the firing is generally more violent at night than at day; but there is never an interval. The rifles are fired continually; the bullets keep whistling above our trench and patter against the branches. The mines, too, come flying over at night, dropping at a high angle. Everybody knows the scarcely audible thud, and knows at once that it is a mine without seeing anything. He warns the others by calling out, "Mine coming!" and everybody looks in the darkness for the "glow-worm," i.e., the burning fuse of the mine. The glowing fuse betrays the direction of the mine, and there are always a few short seconds left to get round some corner. The same is the case with the hand grenades. They, too, betray the line of their flight at night by their burning fuse. If they do not happen to arrive in too great numbers one mostly succeeds in getting out of their way. In daylight that is not so hard because one can overlook everything. It often happens that one cannot save oneself in time from the approaching hand grenade. In that case there is only one alternative--either to remain alive or be torn to atoms. Should a hand grenade suddenly fall before one's feet one picks it up without hesitation as swiftly as possible and throws it away, if possible back into the enemy's trench. Often, however, the fuse is of such a length that the grenade does not even explode after reaching the enemy's trench again, and the Frenchman throws it back again with fabulous celerity. In order to avoid the danger of having a grenade returned the fuse is made as short as possible, and yet a grenade will come back now and again in spite of all. To return a grenade is of course dangerous work, but a man has no great choice; if he leaves the grenade where it drops he is lost, as he cannot run away; and he knows he will be crushed to atoms, and thus his only chance is to pick up the grenade and throw it away even at the risk of having the bomb explode in his hand. I know of hand grenades thrown by the French that flew hither and thither several times. One was thrown by the French and immediately returned; it came back again in an instant, and again we threw it over to them; it did not reach the enemy's trench that time, but exploded in the air.