Rambervillers is now in sight. We halt on the road. Prolonged discussion between the lieutenant and a staff officer. The lieutenant comes up to us-- "We are on the wrong track; all the same we shall lay in a store of provisions and spend the night in the barracks of Rambervillers." It is now quite dark. We wait in a barrack yard, until finally the lieutenant says that we may enter the buildings. Meat is passed round. I have not the heart to cook and eat a piece. Since the previous morning, twenty-four hours on the railway and thirty kilometres on foot, in the heat of the sun. However new and fresh we may be as troops, a little sleep is more than welcome. Each man busies himself in finding quilt and straw mattress. The cannon are silent. For supper I dip some bread in my wine. It tastes good. _Tuesday, 25th August._ Three in the morning. Everybody is up and about. How I should have liked to sleep a few hours longer! In the yard, by candle-light, the lieutenant presides over a distribution of coffee, haricots and potatoes. Our _gamelles_ must be taken down, filled and replaced on our haversacks. What is the direction we are to take? The east, in all probability. We halt at dawn by the side of a wood and make some coffee. Fires are lit and the pots begin to boil. Some of us make an attempt to roast a piece of raw meat at the end of a stick, when the order comes to start off once more. We swallow the burning liquid. The lieutenant informs us that the detachment is to be linked on to the left of the 105th. The cannonade is intense. In a few moments we shall be within the line of fire. Everybody is in the best humour imaginable. Now we are led along in a general movement, the purpose of which we naturally understand nothing; we have only to obey and keep our eyes open. Though full of spirit, we are quite bewildered and dumbfounded. In the first place, we expected to link up with our regiment; it appears that this regiment is fifty kilometres away. Then again, we are without officers: before leaving the depot, the detachment was divided into eight provisional sections of sixty men each. Several of these sections are commanded by a corporal, or even--a still more serious matter--by two corporals; it is so in our own case. We traverse a hilltop and look down into a valley. The sections advance at intervals of thirty paces, in columns of fours. So far everything has been as regular as at an ordinary drill. The lieutenant sends an order that we are to halt and lie down. Good! It is fine, and the sun is beginning to make itself felt. Soon the entire section is lying stretched on the ground.