Towards nine o'clock the bombardment commences. High explosives hurtle by without pause, bursting over Pretz, shattering roofs and bringing down whole walls. My men remain quite calm although they know that a violent and furious fight is immediately before them. Eleven o'clock and our turn is come. The men deploy instantly. There is no time for reflection on my part; I feel nothing, unless it be that the fevered fatigue of the past hours has now left me. Rifles are speaking close at hand, shells are still bursting in the distance. With a strange detachment I watch the lines of our men blue and red against the earth, advancing and advancing apparently without movement. About me the wheat bows down beneath a heavy, languid breeze, and with a certain feverishness I repeat to myself again and again: "I am in it now! This is war and I am in it!" and I am astonished to see that all the things about me retain their ordinary appearance, to hear the snapping of rifles which is no more than the snapping of rifles. For, on the other hand, it almost seems as if my body had undergone some change, that it is no longer the same, that I experience different sensations with different organs. "Lie down!" The bullets are whistling above us now. The rattle of the fusilade drowns their sharp notes; but I know that behind us the song of the bullets dies away to diminuendo and silence. We commence to advance. The movement is admirably executed, with the same regularity and deliberation as if we were at manoeuvres. Little by little there arises in me an exhilaration which raises me above myself. I feel that all these men are part of myself--these men who, at a gesture from me push forward despite the bullets shrilling towards us seeking chests, faces; the living flesh for billets. We lie down for cover, we rise with a jump; we run as fast as our legs will carry us straight for the hidden Boches--we long to see those Boches so that we can get at them more surely and chase them far from these fields ruined and trampled by their hordes. We are completely exposed and under fire. The bullets sing no longer; they pass invisible with a nasty spiteful hiss. They are no longer at play but in deadly earnest.