Far away could be heard the muffled roar of the guns. We had the presentiment that our rest would not be of long duration. The rolling of the gun firing became louder and louder, but we did not know yet that a battle had started here that should turn out a very unfortunate one for the Germans--the five days' battle of the Marne. At midnight we were aroused by an alarm, and half an hour later we were on the move already. The cool air of the night refreshed us, and we got along fairly rapidly in spite of our exhaustion. At about four o'clock in the morning we reached the village of Chepy. At that place friend Mammon had evidently not been so merciful as at Châlons, for Chepy had been thoroughly sacked. We rested for a short time, and noticed with a rapid glance that preparations were just being made to shoot two franctireurs. They were little peasants who were alleged to have hidden from the Germans a French machine-gun and its crew. The sentence was carried out. One was never at a loss in finding reasons for a verdict. And the population had been shown who their "master" was. The little village of Pogny half-way between Châlons-sur-Marne and Vitry-le-François, had fared no better than Chepy, as we observed when we entered it at nine o'clock in the morning. We had now got considerably nearer to the roaring guns. The slightly wounded who were coming back and the men of the ammunition columns told us that a terrible battle was raging to the west of Vitry-le-François. At four o'clock in the afternoon we reached Vitry-le-François, after a veritable forced march. The whole town was crowded with wounded; every building, church, and school was full of wounded soldiers. The town itself was not damaged. Here things must have looked very bad for the Germans for, without allowing us a respite, we were ordered to enter the battle to the west of Vitry-le-François. We had approached the firing line a little more than two miles when we got within reach of the enemy's curtain of fire. A terrific hail of shells was ploughing up every foot of ground. Thousands of corpses of German soldiers were witnesses of the immense losses the Germans had suffered in bringing up all available reserves. The French tried their utmost to prevent the Germans from bringing in their reserves, and increased their artillery fire to an unheard-of violence. It seemed impossible for us to break through that barricade of fire. Hundreds of shells were bursting every minute. We were ordered to pass that hell singly and at a running pace. We were lying on the ground and observed how the first of our men tried to get through. Some ran forward like mad, not heeding the shells that were bursting around them, and got through. Others were entirely buried by the dirt dug up by the shells or were torn to pieces by shell splinters. Two men had scarcely reached the line when they were struck by a bull's-eye, i. e., the heavy shell exploded at their feet leaving nothing of them.