Attached for rations to my section were the commandant of the battalion, a captain, and three sergeants of the État-Major. Two of the sergeants were at the trench telephone, and I could hear them report the news to the officers. "The Germans," they reported, "are penned in on three sides and are prevented from retreating by our artillery." Twice they had tried to pierce our line between them and the Butte de Souain, and twice they were driven back. Good news for us! At 10 A.M. we sent three men from each section to the rear for the soup. At about eleven they reappeared with steaming _marmites_ of soup, stew, and coffee, and buckets of wine. The food was very good, and disappeared to the last morsel. After we had eaten, the captain granted me permission to walk along the ditch back to the fourth company. The trench being too crowded for comfort, I walked alongside to the second company, and searched for my friend Sergeant Velte. Finally I found him lying in a shell-hole, side by side with his adjutant and Sergeant Morin. All three were dead, torn to pieces by one shell shortly after we had passed them in the morning. At the third company they reported that Second Lieutenant Sweeny had been shot through the chest by a lost ball that morning. Hard luck for Sweeny![2] The poor devil had just been nominated _sous-lieutenant_ at the request of the French Embassy in Washington, and when he was attached as supernumerary to the third company we all had hopes that he would have a chance to prove his merit. [2] Lieutenant Sweeny has returned to America. In the fourth company also the losses were severe. The part of the trench occupied by the three companies was directly enfiladed by the German batteries on the Butte de Souain, and every little while a shell would fall square into the ditch and take toll from the occupants. Our company was fully a thousand metres nearer to these batteries, but the trenches we occupied presented a three-quarters face to the fire, and consequently were ever so much harder to hit. Even then, when I got back I found four men _hors de combat_ in the fourth section. In my section two niches were demolished without any one being hit. Time dragged slowly until four in the afternoon, when we had soup again. Many of the men built little fires and with the _Erbsenwurst_ they had found on dead Germans prepared a very palatable soup by way of extra rations.