We reach without incident the old road which cuts the Le Signal woods, and get back on the road from Herbècourt to Éclusier. An orchard here which before the attack was a signal station has not suffered much. The dugouts are whole and I stop my troop to look after my leg which has begun to bleed. A little while ago, as I was crossing some barbed wire entanglements, I felt a tear but I thought it was of no consequence. But now the blood has soaked through the drawers and trousers. I tear off a strip from my package of dressings and put on a bandage which stops the bleeding until we reach the next dressing station. I have hardly put my equipment on again than I hear beyond me in the road an infernal noise of scrap iron, oaths and cries. I jump up. It is our movable kitchen driven by Gondran. Yesterday, it went ahead to Herbècourt on premature orders. To-day, it was right in the barrage. Now that the long expected lull has come, the lieutenant is sending it back to Froissy. On the way back Gondran met four wounded men who were getting to the rear only with the greatest difficulty, and he took them on his rickety wagon. This torpedo, with its big sheet-iron smokestack which is full of holes and twisted, doesn’t look much like an ambulance. Instead, one might think it was some archaic engine of war of the Gauls. Phoebe and Lidoire, the two lean hacks which drag it, are marked and cut by the harness and their legs are bent from pulling this badly balanced weight. Suddenly, the bombardment, which seemed to have ceased, begins again. First two shots, then repeated more and more rapidly, and only in our direction. A shower of splinters beats around us, wounds the two horses and cuts the reins. They run away at a mad pace with wild plunges through the fields. Gondran is wounded in the hands and is helpless; he clings to the smokestack; the wounded are tossed about. They shout from the pain of their re-opened wounds and hang on as best they can to the handle of the kettle. The speed of the two horses becomes giddy. They head for the quarry at a gallop. A hundred yards more and they will inevitably fall into the canal, a fall of more than fifty yards. That would mean their utter destruction. I have no choice of ways in which to save the five men. With six shots from my revolver I kill one horse and throw the other to the ground. The kitchen comes to a stop twenty yards from the cliff. But danger is not averted by any manner of means. Shells follow us. From some faraway place an observer must have taken us for a “75” getting into position and he tries to destroy us. We abandon the kitchen which is now almost completely done for, and as fast as we can, saved by some miracle from the shells, which double in intensity, we throw ourselves into the first trench we find. I find the Territorials and the provost at the great quarry and I hand my prisoners over to him. It is only a step from there to headquarters. I arrive at six o’clock.