Sitting on blankets in a circle round the fire, which was patiently tended by the cook, we drank our coffee. My comrades asked me to read them a few pages from my notebook, and wished me a safe return in order that these reminiscences, which to a great extent are theirs also, might be published. "Are you going to leave the names in?" "Yes, unless you don't want me to." "No, of course not. We'll show them to the old people and children later on, if we get back." "If I am killed, one of you will take care of my notebook. I keep it here--see?--in the inside pocket of my shirt." Hutin thought a little. "Yes, only you know that it's forbidden to search dead men. You'd better make a note in your book to say you told us to take it." He was quite right, so on the first page I wrote: "In case I am killed I beg my comrades to keep these pages until they can give them to my family." "Now you've made your arrangements _mortis causa_," said Le Bidois, who was reading over my shoulder. And he added: "That doesn't increase the risk either." Le Bidois is a thin, lanky fellow rather like the King of Spain, for which reason Déprez and I have nicknamed him Alfonso. Every day we fire off the old Montmartre catch at him: _Alfonso, Alfonso, Veux-tu te t'nir comme il fô!_ We also call him "the Spanish Grandee." He never gets annoyed. "A jewel of a corporal!" as Moratin, his layer, always says. * * * * * Some of the 26th Artillery have brought back two ammunition wagons abandoned by the enemy at Mangiennes. Painted a dark colour they resembled the old 90 mm. material with which we used to practise when training at Le Mans. They were followed by two large carts, of the usual type used by the Meuse peasantry, long and narrow in build, full of packs, tins, képis marked 130, camp-kettles already blackened by bivouac fires, belts with brass buckle-plates, and caps with dark stains on them. On the top bristled a heap of bayonets and rifles, red with rust and blood. A large blue flannel sash, sopping wet, hung behind one of the carts, and trailed in the muddy road. These were the remains of the unfortunate infantry killed at Mangiennes. This spectacle, rendered the more harrowing by the rain, moved us more than all the stories we had heard about last Monday's fight. As I was taking some horses down to drink I saw, near the gate of the loopholed cemetery at Azannes, some soldiers who had fallen asleep, stretched out anywhere, exhausted and half undressed. They might have been taken for dead men. That is how I think the Mangiennes people must have looked. And these remains also conjured up a vision of the trenches where they were lined up. In the absolute silence which for eight days now has reigned all along the line we have almost forgotten the work of death for which we have come here. * * * * *