It was still pitch-dark. Cinders continued to smoulder on the hearths. The guns were still roaring, and the vivid jets of fire startled us like flashes of lightning. A little way off, to the east, a farm or hayrick was burning. The weather was sultry and a persistent smell of putrefying flesh permeated the air. The battery started; we were off to the firing-line. At daybreak we reached Dammartin, where, on the doors and closed shutters, notices and billeting directions were chalked up in German. On the front door of one house I saw two words scrawled in pointed, Gothic handwriting: "_Gute Leute_" (Good people). I wondered who it was that lived there.... We continued on our way. The dull boom of the guns seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, and continued uninterruptedly. By the side of the road a grave had been dug and marked by a white deal cross bearing a name painted in tar and capped by a Chasseur's shako with a brass chain. The dead man had evidently not been buried soon enough, and a sickening smell rose up from the freshly turned soil, which had cracked under the hot sun. The road was still staked out with dead horses, swollen like wine-skins, their stiffened legs with shining shoes threatening the sky. From a gaping wound in the flank of a big chestnut mare worms were wriggling into the grass; others were swarming in her nostrils and mouth, and in a bullet-hole behind her ear. "Trot!" The battery became almost invisible in its own dust. We began to pass wounded, hundreds of wounded--infantry of the line, Alpine troops, and Colonial infantry white with dust, their wounds dressed with red bandages. They helped each other along. The majority were marching in small groups. Many had stopped to rest. It was very hot, and I saw several of them round an apple-tree, shaking down the fruit in order to slake their thirst. We had halted while the Major received orders from an A.D.C. I questioned one of the Colonials, who was wounded in the head. "Well, how are things going down there?" "Phew! they're falling thick!" I did not know whether he was referring to bullets, shell, or men, but from the expression of the drawn and haggard faces it was easy to see that the fighting had been severe. "Been fighting long here?" "Yes." "How many days?" "It had begun when we came." "And when did you come?" "The day before yesterday." And he repeated: "Yes, they're falling thick!" We restarted, again at a trot. The clear sky, of a pure limpid blue on the northern and eastern horizon, was fleeced with the white smoke of shrapnel shell; in the distance black clouds were rising from burning buildings and high-explosive projectiles. We were still pursued by the smell of dead flesh, which harassed and obsessed us, making us peer about in all directions for hidden corpses.