Yesterday I received a sleeping-bag made of a kind of soft oil-cloth, lined with flannel: a notable event in a soldier's life. This evening, wrapped in my cover, I enter my sleeping-bag and pull down the edges over my head. _Friday, 20th November._ The trees are now entirely stripped of leaves. The country looks cold and dismal. The eight bodies are laid out in a line in front of the grotto: the second time we have had such a sight before our eyes. This one is Mallet, who was on guard with us in the train which brought us to the depot. He was a little stout fellow, quiet and taciturn, with a brown beard. War was not at all his vocation, and he would frequently remark with a sigh: "I am certain I shall be killed." Ill-omened words which should never be spoken. Mallet wore a medallion on his breast.... The night before the attack he had said quietly to a friend-- "If I die, send this medallion to my wife." The friend now tenderly unclasps it from his capote. As this latter is being removed from the body, the cloth, covered with frozen mud, is as stiff as cardboard. After a prolonged examination we recognize Corporal Lion, whose good-natured face has been rendered unrecognizable by a wound. He is another who, speaking of his young wife and children and his past happiness, had imprudently said: "It's all over with me.... I shall never come back!..." There is some difficulty in taking from his shrivelled finger the wedding-ring, the gold of which still shines a little beneath the enveloping mud. Our nerves are now too hardened for such a sight to affect them. Emotion has become calm and considerate, and each of us thinks-- "Well, if I were in his place, would there be around my body nothing but this cold and gloom of winter?" The sergeant summons me along with Reymond and Maxence to go on cemetery duty-- "Take a shovel or a pick and go down to Bucy." In the old cemetery surrounding the church, a lieutenant indicates the spot where we must dig a grave for eight men. We set to work. Shortly afterwards a tumbrel brings along the bodies. Two attendants lay them out in a line. Meanwhile, the hole is growing larger. Our shovels encounter old rust-coloured bones, and even an entire skull, which is deposited on the edge of the grave. At eleven o'clock the work is finished; we return to the grotto for lunch. Above Bucy a duel is being fought between a French and a German aeroplane; the rapid sharp cracks of a _mitrailleuse_ reach our ears. Suddenly a jet of flame streams from the German machine, which makes straight for the north, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. It is hit; the French machine, after circling around, follows after. On reaching the grotto we learn that the enemy bird fell within our lines on the Maubeuge road. The pilot has succeeded in making good his escape, but our 75's have opened fire upon the machine, which is still burning.