I shake a corporal sleeping near me. From one end of the line to the other a shiver passes, followed by the quick rustling of straw; then bayonets clatter, and magazines click. All this has passed in an instant, yet I have still had time to see the major and the captain jump back down into the trench away to the right, and scarcely have they done so before black figures are silhouetted, barely discernible against the lightless sky, over the top of the nearest rising. They were not thirty yards away when I distinguished the pointed spikes of their helmets. That sight was more than sufficient. At the top of my lungs I issue an order for rapid fire. Hardly has the command left my lips when the dense masses of men rapidly approaching us burst into shrill, savage shouts. "Hurrah! Hurrah! Vorwärts!" How many thousands of soldiers are surging down upon us then? The moist earth quivers beneath the tramp of their heavy feet. Most surely must we be smashed to pieces, trampled down, broken. For there are not more than sixty of us all told, and how may sixty men extended in single file hope to resist the tremendous pressure of these ranks upon ranks of men rushing down upon us like a herd of maddened buffaloes? "Rapid fire! Nom de Dieu! Fire!" The crackling of the rifles rends the air; spurts of flame shatter the darkness. The rifles of my platoon have spoken simultaneously! And now there is a gap in the very heart of the charging mass. I hear shrill screams of agony as of beasts mortally stricken. The dark figures divide to flow right and left, just as if, before the trench, and extending its whole length, a tempest had raged and laid men to the earth, as the breath of the gale bends down the growing wheat. Some of the men about me say: "Look, Lieutenant! See, they are lying down!" "No, my friend! It is not so. They have fallen down!" And ... (Censored) Once more I repeat: "Fire! Fire! Let them have it! Put it into them! Fire!" The men reload their magazines swiftly, resting their cheeks ... (Censored) ... and fire a volley at point blank range. Out there, men fall in swathes! The gap widens and widens until no one remains standing before us, not a living soul! But the shadows nevertheless are still moving onwards to the right and left; they intend to outflank, to envelop us. And to the right and left there is not a man to stem for a moment that rushing torrent, which, at the best, we have only been able to check for an instant, and divert to either side. The wave will reform behind us--all will be lost! "Hurrah! Vorwärts!" They excite themselves with their own cries, like savages. Their raucous voices rise loud above the crackling rifle fire, toned and modulated in the flux of the wind-driven rain and the louder detonations close at hand. Suddenly the wind has increased; the rain descends literally in torrents: one gains the impression that the fury of the fighters has moved the very heavens.