As night approached the grey vault of the sky seemed to sink still lower, drawing in the horizon over the fields, and almost to touch the earth itself. A dense fog first surrounded and then smothered us. We could not have told upon which side the sun was setting; the west was as opaque as the east. The yellow, diffused light gradually became weaker. Here and there by the wayside we could still distinguish the dark forms of dead horses. Night fell. The rain was trickling down my back as far as my loins. I was very cold and now felt more acutely than ever that indescribable sensation as if my life's blood was being slowly sucked from my veins. The battery lumbered on and on.... It was perhaps ten o'clock when we finally halted on the outskirts of a village and ranged up our carriages by the side of the road. We had to wait there some time, sitting motionless on the limbers and becoming more frozen every minute. Our teeth chattered with cold. The delay was probably caused by a cross-roads, a block in the transport traffic, a passing convoy, or some other obstacle; in any case we could not move on. I began to wonder whether we should have to pass the whole night in the rain.... Eventually we reached a field in which we bivouacked, stretching the lines between the carriages. The hurricane lamps formed large yellow points in the opaque darkness, piercing the night without lighting anything. There was no sound save the squelching of dragging footsteps as the exhausted men and horses moved about in the mud. The sergeant-major summoned the corporals for the issue of rations. But the distribution between the guns had not been finished and the men immediately went away again, preferring to wait until the next day to get their rations. The sergeant-major shouted after them, declaring that if there should be an alarm they would risk going for a whole day without food. He was perfectly right, but no one listened to him. The darkness was so intense that it was difficult to follow the road, and in order to keep together the men kept shouting: "Eleventh!... This way.... Eleventh!..." Convoys passed by, splashing us with mud. A wheel just grazed me. After a long march the only shelter we could find was some rickety old barns, open to the four winds of heaven, in which a thin sprinkling of straw hardly separated us from the beaten-down earth. Here the battery, silent, soaked to the skin and smelling like wet animals, sank shivering into a troubled sleep, continually interrupted by the cries of men dreaming. _Sunday, September 13_ This morning the sun was shining. Clouds were still banked up to the west, but the blue, which cheered us up wonderfully, eventually spread over the whole sky. We continued our march forward.