I am sure that while they are giving their whole attention to getting on in their adventurous spirits, entirely ignorant of the first feeling of fear, that they have no other idea in their heads than to play a good joke on the Boches. They are fine jokers! They have never been known to draw back from what offers, but when their lives are at stake.... There is still nothing. Not a shot! But how could the enemy lookouts see them? We ourselves who know their goal, who follow their trail, lose sight of them momentarily. Brown grass and burned shrubbery covers the ground at that spot; they must be there inside. The ten minutes have gone now. Still nothing!!! Have they seen a danger we cannot see as they neared the goal, and have they burrowed themselves in the ground? Nevertheless, their mission is extremely urgent, and they know it. Lieutenant Delpos nervously frets about and stamps his foot, “I ought to have gone myself....” “Wait, there they are.” Marseille and Grizard are coming back; they are only ten feet from the trench. But rash to madness, in their absolute unconsciousness of danger now that their mission is accomplished, they take no thought of themselves, and instead of sliding under the barbed wire, as they went, to get into the dugout Grizard stands up and shouts, “Let the balloon go up.” At the same moment, a shower of bullets! Grizard rebounded, twisted himself in a final contortion, and fell on his back while Marseille jumped into the trench shouting to his comrade, “Haven’t you finished playing the man-serpent?” Then, when he saw that his comrade was absolutely dead, he burst out in wild anger: “Nom de Dieu ... Nom de Dieu ... de nom de Dieu.... If that isn’t too bad.... He needn’t stay there, the rascal. I’m going to get him.” The explosion came, a frightful one; the bombs had just exploded. “To the sap ... to the sap. It’s going to rain stones.” The pile of stones is thrown up with tremendous violence. Blocks are thrown into the trench. The smoke blows away and behind the scattered ruins we see two machine guns in position with their gun crews killed beside them, and all their material for fortifications and gas-making apparatus. The sub-lieutenant jumps on the parapet, “To the bayonet, forward, enfants, get the tools.” And before the enemy had recovered from his stupefaction, our men are on the guns, which they get and bring back in a hurry under a storm of bullets and grenades. When we are back from this sudden attack, we call the roll. Several fail to answer, and among them my friend of the day before. I suffer as though he had been my own brother. That night, when the storm of fire has ceased, we try to search carefully through the darkness of the terrain where our missing men have fallen. Groans tells us that they are there, but in their fever and pain no one answers our calls. At daybreak, at the risk of the bullets which still whistle above the trench, we are able to see them.