At four o'clock sentries were posted and everybody fell asleep. A steady rain was falling, and to keep dry we hooked one edge of our tent-sheet on the ground above the niche and placed dirt on top of it to hold. Then we pushed cartridges through the button-holes of the tent, pinning them into the side of the trench and forming a good cover for the occupant of the hole. Thus we rested until the new day broke, bringing a clear sky and sunshine. This day, the 27th,--the third of the battle,--passed without mishap to my section. We spent our time eating and sleeping, mildly distracted by an intermittent bombardment. VII Another night spent in the same cramped quarters! We were getting weary of inactivity, and it was rather hard work to keep the men in the ditch. They sneaked off singly and in pairs, always heading back to the German dugouts, all bent on turning things upside down in the hope of finding something of value to carry as a keepsake. Haeffle came back once with three automatic pistols but no cartridges. From another trip he returned with an officer's helmet, and the third time he brought triumphantly back a string three feet long of dried sausages. Haeffle always did have a healthy appetite and it transpired that on the way back he had eaten a dozen sausages, more or less. The dried meat had made him thirsty and he had drunk half a canteen of water on top of it. The result was, he swelled up like a poisoned pup, and for a time he was surely a sick man. Zinn found two shiny German bayonets, a long thin one and one short and heavy, and swore he'd carry them for a year if he had to. Zinn hailed from Battle Creek and wanted to use them as brush-knives on camping trips in the Michigan woods; but alas, in the sequel they got too heavy and were dropped along the road. One man found a German pipe with a three-foot soft-rubber stem, which he intended sending to his brother as a souvenir. Man and pipe are buried on the slopes of the Butte de Souain. He died that same evening. At the usual time, 4 P.M., we had soup, and immediately after came the order to get ready. Looking over the trench, we watched the fourth company form in the open back of the ditch and, marching past us in an oblique direction, disappear round a spur of wooded hill. The third company followed at four hundred metres' distance, then the second, and as they passed out of sight around the hill, we jumped out and, forming in line, sections at thirty-metre intervals, each company four hundred metres in the rear of the one ahead, we followed, _arme à la bretelle_.