Our shelter was composed of a number of small wooden boxes, half covered with earth. In the bluish light of night, our outlines looked enormous. The moon lighted up, with a vague gleam, this devastated space, where the shattered, broken-branched trees added their cataleptic attitudes to the general desolation. Around the shelters, many of which were no more than tangled rubbish, about fifteen dead bodies were lying crushed on the ground. In the background was the Lizerne Mill. A jagged outline could be seen standing out against the sky. Our men were wandering about trying to find a place. At the bottom of a hole, the yellowish light of a candle could be seen, but it was soon extinguished. The ambulance men were burying the nearest of the dead. The Chaplain, who looked like a dark shadow in the moonlight, offered up a prayer. It was in this spot that we were to live for the next three days. Our men huddled together on planks of wood with a slight layer of straw. Each one rolled himself up in his blanket and wedged himself into his corner. Everyone was silent. Through the open door could be seen the pale blue of the sky with two stars shining in it. In the distance, the big cannons were booming all the time. We tried to go on sleeping as long as possible, stiff though we were. The sun had already risen. The square of the sky which could be seen through the open door had gradually become a square of light. Death had not come to us during the night. The sun was warm and we lay down on the bare ground behind the shelter, like so many lizards. The kindly golden light chased away all bitterness and fatigue. Under our feet, the bodies which had only just been buried gave a sensation of elasticity to the ground. The full daylight took away the phantasmagorial appearance of everything, and our shelters appeared in their true aspect, wretched boxes, made of pinewood half covered with tufts of grass. The ground all around us was hollowed out in enormous craters, several of which were quite close to us. A field all yellow with turnips in flower crowned the summit, the rest was nothing but brown earth. A few men at work passed along by the hedge. One by one they ran along, bending nearly double. They passed near to us, making straight for the top of the hill. Little clouds of dust, made by bullets, kept rising at their feet. Their coats could be seen mingling with the yellowish-green of the turnip field. They then disappeared among the flowers.