“Three-handed poker is too risky.” “Well, here’s a fourth.” Someone raised the canvas which served as a door. It’s an intelligence officer from the colonel. “Lieutenant, D ... company is running out of munitions. Pass yours to them and send back for new supplies. Here’s the order.” The lieutenant read the order and said: “All right. It will be done.” Hardly twenty minutes later, ten men from each section, each carrying four caissons, were assembled on the way out of the village. D ... company’s position, which we marked yesterday, is about six hundred yards away and some yards beyond the ridge of the plateau between the main road from Amiens and the Somme. There’s little chance of losing the way, for it is downhill. We might pass through the fields but thirty yards before reaching the trench the ground is literally swept with shells. It is impossible to use the communication trench. The enemy artillery has located it mathematically and has completely destroyed it. The shells fall there without a let-up. The least dangerous passage is the unprotected ground. Stretched out in the mud, the head of one against the heels of the other, our men form an endless chain on the terrain which extends from the sheltered ridge to the fire trench. They pass along the caissons by a simple movement of the arms, without raising their bodies or their heads. In the same way and by the same means, crawling along, I reach the trenches in my turn and fall in. Captain D ... is there, striding from one gun to another, encouraging his men and hurrying their fire. “I was sure that I was going to run out of ammunition. They were already within one hundred and fifty yards.” “We’ve passed you one hundred and sixty caissons. We’ve sent men for more and they’ll be here in half an hour.” “We don’t need any more. It’s all over. Their attempt is broken. By daylight we’ll see more than two hundred bodies in front of our barbed wire. You can go. I thank you. Take my regards and thanks to Lieutenant Casanova.” The firing continued all night, sometimes intermittently, sometimes in violent salvos, so that one might imagine that the enemy was making another attack. At dawn we only heard rare, isolated detonations. * * * * * Our men returned to the cantonment uninjured. There were a few scratches and slight wounds in the hands, but there was no discharge in sight. Some of them had had narrow escapes. Bullets had ricochetted and gone through the steel helmets. Linari’s was perforated with a round, well-defined hole. The bullet had gone out close to the ear. [Illustration: THE LEAST DANGEROUS PASSAGE IS THE UNPROTECTED GROUND _See page 185_] They were exhausted by lack of sleep, and after eating a meal hastily thrown together from the things at hand, they started for their underground shelters. Just then the sun rose shining brightly.