LIEUTENANT DAUCHE It was in the month of October 1915 that I made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Dauche. I can never recall that time without deep emotion. We had been living, before Sapigneul, through weeks of fire. The Champagne offensive had for long been rumbling on our right, and its farthest eddies seemed to break on our sector, as the waves scattered by a hurricane that spends itself in the open sea. For three days our guns had made reply to those of Pouilleuse, and we had waited, rifles at hand, for an order which never came. Our minds were uneasy and vacant, still reeling from that kind of resonant drunkenness which results from a prolonged bombardment. We were glad at not having to make a murderous attack, and at the same time we worried over the causes which had prevented it. It was then that I was wounded for the first time. Some chance evacuation took me to the Château de S----, which is, for the Rheims country, an indifferent piece of architecture. It stands in the midst of soft verdure and looks, across the slope of the hill, upon the delicate valley of the Vesle. My wound, though not serious, was painful enough. It made me a little feverish and long for silence and solitude. It gave me pleasure to remain, for long hours, in the presence of a pain which, while endurable, made me test my patience and reflect on the vulnerable nature of an organism in which, up till then, I had placed an unshakable confidence. I occupied a bright room, decorated with Jouy tapestry and delicate paintings. My bed was placed there together with that of another officer, who walked silently up and down the room, and who respected my reticence. The day came, however, when I was told to take solid food, and that day we began chatting, no doubt because the most ancient human traditions dispose those who eat together to enter into conversation. In spite of the moods which I then experienced, this talk was a pleasure and gave me what I must have needed. I was absorbed in melancholy reflections, and brooded over the misery of the times. Lieutenant Dauche from the first appeared to me to show a serenity of mind and a quiet cheerfulness of spirit. Later, I saw that he deserved to be greatly admired for maintaining such an attitude in the face of an unending misfortune which had not spared him any trials. We were both natives of Lille; it gave us a point of contact. The event of an inheritance, and the requirements of his position, early led Dauche to settle in the Meuse district and set up a home there. His marriage was happy, and his young wife was mother of two fine children. A third was about to be born when the German invasion swept over the face of France, unsettling the world, ruining a prosperous industry, violently separating Dauche from his children and his pregnant wife, of whom, since, he had only heard uncertain and disquieting news.