After passing Azannes the column lapsed into silence. The road skirted the cemetery, in the walls of which the infantry, at every few yards, had knocked loopholes through which we caught glimpses of graves, chapels, and crosses. At the foot of the walls lay heaps of rubble and mortar. Farther on, near the edge of a wood, the field had been seared by a narrow trench, covered with lopped-off branches bearing withered leaves, and showing up against the fresh green grass like a yellow gash. In front of the trench barbed wire had been stretched. The enemy, therefore, was presumably not far off. Amid the monotonous rumble of the carriages we tried to collect our thoughts. The prospect of the first engagement brought with it an apprehension and dread which clamoured for recognition in each man's mind. There is no denying the fact. The battery rolled on its way through a large wood. The road, almost blindingly white in the midday sun, formed a striking contrast to the arch-shaped avenues of sombre trees, whose green plumes towered above us at a giddy height. By the side of the road stood a horse with drooping head and the viscous discharge due to strangles running from his nostrils; he did not even budge as the guns and wagons thundered on their way. It seemed almost a miracle that the bones of the poor beast's haunches had not broken through his skin. His flanks, heaving spasmodically, seemed to meet behind his ribs, as if they had been emptied of flesh and entrails. He was a pitiful sight. In the shade of a bridle-path yet another abandoned horse was still browsing. Between two clumps of trees lay a pond bordered by reeds and rushes, its surface shimmering like a silver mirror--an effect which was heightened by the dark woodlands in the background. In the distance the magnificent line of lofty hills which had hidden the horizon from us at Ville-devant-Chaumont, and which we had now flanked, formed an azure setting to the picture. On one side of the road stood a farmhouse. In a small paddock near the flood-gates of the pond we saw a freshly dug grave in the shade of an elder-bush. A cross, roughly fashioned out of a couple of branches tied together, was planted in the newly turned soil, and a ruled leaf torn out of a pocket-book, stuck on to some splinter of the wood, bore a name roughly written in pencil. On emerging from the forest our batteries, which up to then had been in column of route, rapidly deployed down the side of a long valley, half hidden by the oat-crops, through which infantry, whose presence could only be guessed, caused ripples to flow like those raised by a puff of wind on still water.