There were, however, some field kitchens belonging to other parts of the army. They had prepared meals, but could not get rid of the food; even if their company, i.e., the rest of their company, should have arrived they would have had far too much food. Many a one for whom they had prepared a meal was no longer in need of one. Thus we were most willingly given as much to eat as we wanted. We had scarcely finished eating when we had to form up again. Gradually several men of our company had come together. We lined up in a manner one is used to in war. The "old man" arrived. One of the officers reported the company to him, but evidently did not report the number of the missing. Perhaps the old man did not care, for he did not even ask whether we knew anything about the one or the other. He stepped in front of the company and said (a sign of his good temper), "Good morning, men!" (It was seven o'clock in the evening!) As an answer he got a grunting noise such as is sometimes made by a certain animal, and a sneering grin. Without much ado we were ordered to go to the tool wagons which were standing near the northern exit of the town, and provide ourselves with rifle ammunition and three hand grenades each. "At half past nine to-night you have to line up here; each man must have 500 cartridges, three hand grenades, and fuses for igniting them; step aside!" On our way to the implement wagons we noticed that everywhere soldiers that had lost their companies were being drawn together and that new formations were being gotten together with the greatest speed. We felt that something was in the air, but could not tell what it might be. The rain had started again and was coming down in torrents. When we were at the appointed place at half past nine in the evening we saw all the principal streets filled with troops, all of them in storming outfit like ourselves. A storming outfit consists of a suit made of cloth, a cap, light marching baggage, tent canvas, cooking utensils, tent-pegs, the iron ration, and, in the case of sappers, trench tools also. During the day we got our "Klamotten," i.e., our equipment together again. We were standing in the rain and waited. We did not yet know what was going to happen. Then we were ordered to take off the lock of our rifles and put them in our bread bags. The rifles could not now be used for shooting. We began to feel what was coming, viz., a night attack with bayonets and hand grenades. So as not to shoot each other in the dark we had to remove the lock from the rifle. We stood there till about 11 o'clock when we were suddenly ordered to camp. We did not know what the whole thing meant, and were especially puzzled by the last order which was, however, welcomed by all of us. We judged from the rolling thunder that the battle had not yet decreased in violence, and the sky was everywhere red from the burning villages and farm houses.