Panting and breathless, with our tongues hanging out and our backs aching so painfully that some of our men were just going to stand upright for a moment's relief when they were stopped by the whizzing of bullets overhead. We pushed on again and it seemed as though we should never be at the end of the passage. At one moment, we lost sight of the file and feared that we had passed the post. My brother headed the little group that had become separated from the others, and I closed the march. Fortunately we were able to join our comrades again. Just at this moment, we came to a number of corpses in a worse state than the others. We had to pass over them, our faces almost touching theirs, our knees on their legs. A terrible putrid odour emanated from them, an odour that will always be an infernal memory. Again we found ourselves knocking against some human bodies. But this time we were crawling over living men. Finally, we arrived at our post. What a relief it was to us! Our end had been accomplished. We had relieved the guard and not one of us had been hit. Our instructions were simple. We had to keep a lookout and defend ourselves in case of attack. We thought we should have nothing to fear from the German Artillery, as their own post was so near. The one thing was to escape bombs and grenades. When the service was organised, we hollowed out some shallow burrows to serve as shelters. The Lieutenant passed me a bottle and told me to disinfect a dead man buried in the trench, whose shoulder was visible.