“You’re going to hear a concert. They haven’t massed more than three hundred guns in all, from the ‘75’ to the heavy artillery, on our fifteen hundred yard front for nothing. Have you seen the ‘150’ mortars? They have some muzzles.” Dawn appears. A light fog rises from the ground and seems thickest at the side of the canal where the German positions are. It is the coldest hour of the day and the earth of our dugout is as hard as iron; it is frozen. Instinctively I let down the ear-flaps of my cap which until now I have kept under my helmet. “Are you cold?” “I’m not warm.” “A drop of brandy?” “Sure.” The lieutenant passes his canteen to me and as I drink the thin stream from its mouth I feel a wave of warmth. Light comes, but it is very pale. Around us we hear the tread of feet on the hard ground and the slapping of arms across the chest. We wait nervously. Presently we receive an order not to fire until the blast of the whistle. Eight o’clock! Behind us, in the limpid azure, the red disk of the sun rises. A shell cuts through the air; then another; then still another. Our artillery is firing on the Boche lines. “Attention.” The response is instantaneous. We can still see no movement in the ranks of the infantry to our right whose rush we are to support. What are they waiting for? The men are nervous and they start to grumble. Boom! comes the Boche’s reply. A great mass of earth, grass and crumbled stones shoots up a hundred yards ahead of us! Too short! Boom! still another. Still short! A large shell heads for us. It thunders. Where is it going to burst? The devil! It falls near our first section, to the left; then, almost at once, another, a little to the right. Are we spotted? We haven’t fired a cartridge yet, and there isn’t an aeroplane or sausage in the air. Two “150’s,” one right after the other, burst fair on the section, right in the hole. An enormous mass of earth spurts up. Through the dust and smoke we see broken arms, sandbags ripped open, legs torn from the body, an entire body, the gun!... The lieutenant knits his brows in dismay. A sergeant from the reserve half section, slightly pale, runs up with the details. “Sergeant Rollé, the gun layer, and the crew are killed.” “Occupy the emplacement with your half-section.” “Very well, Lieutenant.” Shells are falling in our sector without a break. All the guns are splattered with splinters and most of the crews are slightly wounded. Durozier’s half section jump out of their dugout in a hurry and throw themselves into the hole which has now increased in size to a vast yawning crater. “If we could only fire on something. But there’s nothing to see. And no signal.” The Boche artillery certainly has a grudge against our first section. The new gun is scarcely in position when a great shell falls in the same place, in the same crater.