When this was arranged, everything was ready for his departure and he invited me to dinner as he ordinarily did. His dinners were always good and there was excellent wine which his servant had managed to find in the ruins of Harbonnière and Villers. As he was lighting his cigar after the dessert, he said: “We’re going to pay a call on the Boches this evening. The chances of staying there are about even, but, in any case, even if we remain, the performance won’t be uninteresting. It will be as good as a first night at the ‘Grand-Guignol!’ Take your revolver, some grenades and come along.” I would have been highly unappreciative to have refused such a kind invitation, although adventure, to say nothing of such a mad adventure, has never been to my taste. But Lieutenant Delpos had the reputation of always getting out, so why shouldn’t he get out this time. Gondran was waiting for us a little ways from Éclusier, in a small creek, hidden under the trees. Gondran and his boat! It was one of those flat-bottomed, square-ended boats that fishermen use to cross marshes where the water is shallow. He had covered it with a camouflage of grass, weeds, and moss so that even close to it was impossible to tell it from one of the thousand little islands which obstruct the Somme at this point. We slipped into the boat and stretched out at once—it wouldn’t have held us in any other way—and waited for total darkness. When it came, Gondran began to push the boat ahead. He was used to fishing for eels with a spear in the clear waters of the canals and knew how to move silently, without a splash, almost without making a ripple on the surface of the water. If our course had not been against the current, we might have been mistaken for a pile of drifting grass. Flat on his stomach in the stern with both arms in the water up to his elbows and a stick of wood in each hand, slowly and silently he paddled like a duck. The officer and I were both flat also, in the bow, and we peered into the darkness. I held a string in one hand, and the other end was tied around Gondran’s arm. We had arranged that one pull meant to stop and stay where we were; two to go back. We went on without accident for nearly two hours. Suddenly, a bump, a hard jolt, fortunately without any noise besides the rustling of the weeds. The night was so thick that it was impossible to tell what the obstacle was, whether it was the bank or an island. We tried in vain to see through the fathomless darkness. We ventured to feel about with our hands, and, in the middle of the weeds and reeds, I was gripped by something. I pulled back my arm, in a hurry, to get away. A sharp point cut the skin, then another, and I felt a scratch from my elbow to my fist. I whispered in Delpos’s ear, “Barbed wire.”