Three out of four of our guns are silent. The fourth, the last one to arrive, with all the rapidity of its fire, alone sustains the attack of our infantry. The wonderful little machine devours without a skip the endless munitions which the crew have difficulty in bringing to it. “Fire, Adjutant, fire! Don’t stop. Give it to them,” shouts the lieutenant, seized by the fever of battle. And the adjutant fires, fires without stopping. Our wave reaches its objective, the enemy flees, whole companies surrender. “That’s it; we are there. Fire on the reserves, farther, the length of the embankment. Cease firing, stop it, stop firing. We are there.... Cease firing!” Just as he shouts this order a shell, the last one—the third on the same spot—falls, bursts, and buries the gun and its heroic crew. “M ...! The swine! Can’t they see that it is finished?” Heavily and mournfully we make toll of the dead. Comrades pay their last respects to their comrades. They take their letters and keepsakes, and arrange the bodies for their last resting place as best they can. The order to go back is given. For two hours we make our way through the communication trench, now only a stream of mud in which we sink to our ankles. We advance, dejected, silent, heavy with fatigue, depressed by the thought of those we have left behind, whom we shall never see again, as was our wont, even yesterday at the cantonment. The lieutenant is in the lead, leaning on his baton, silently, chewing on his eternal cigarette. We finally reach the end of the trench at Froissy and come out on the main road. In spite of their long hours of fatigue and the sleepless nights, the men suddenly seem less weary. They no longer march one on top of the other, stepping over corpses. Their horizon has broadened; they see; they breathe; they come out of their trance; they emerge from Hell, they come from death. They are coming back to life! Two hundred yards ahead we can already see groups: our mules, our limbers, companies of Territorials who are repairing the roads, sappers from the engineer corps, men from the field kitchens, automobiles, dreams ... the living world at last. The sub-lieutenant has remained at the rear of the column, assuming the difficult task of encouraging the stragglers and keeping up the spirits of the weak. Now he runs up and down the ranks. He is proud of his men; he loves their swagger and steadiness. “Come, children, a little speed. Try to march by these people in some style.” And as we approach the first huts he begins to sing at the top of his lungs his song, the song of the machine gun: _Mais dans le petit jour blémi,_ _Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!_ _Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse,_ _Avec tes tac tac réguliers,_ _Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._ Some of the men look at him in surprise, look at him and then begin to sing.