All at once a flame leaps up, glistening on brass buckles and helmet spikes, turning bayonets to silver. The Germans have set fire to the pile of straw beneath which the major and captain were snugly sleeping a short while since. The flames writhe and waver this way and that at the wind's caprice; drops of rain flying before the glow become like the spray of a rushing fountain. The faces of my men are pale and streaming with water; their eyes, under frowning brows, are dark-ringed and like sparks of steel, expressing at once their eagerness to strike and kill as well as to live. "First section, right face!..." Can they hear me?... "Right face!..." They do not hear me. The unceasing spatter of rifle fire, the moaning wind, the rain beating a tattoo on mess-tins, and above all, the shouting of human voices drown my command. "Let me pass, you!" I thrust a man against the parapet of the trench. "Let me pass!" From man to man I progress, calling aloud for the sergeant. One, two, three soldiers I pass, and then before me the trench is empty, abandoned; a little trampled straw, a rifle, a few knapsacks and nothing more. But I am just in time to catch one dark figure of a man hauling himself out of the trench by the overhanging brambles. "Hey, you!" I cry. "The major? The captain?..." The wind hurls a few disconnected words into my face. "Have left ... orders!" At that moment two helmeted figures appear above the parapet someway further along to the right, two figures silhouetted against the light of the fire. The next instant something falls heavily on to the straw at the bottom of the trench. Meanwhile behind me the shrieking Germans are right on the top of my men. Obviously there is nothing to do but try and win through to the trenches of a battalion of chasseurs located to the rear and right of our line. I give the order with all the strength of my lungs. "Pass through the wood! Not alongside it! Retreat into the wood!" I thrust forward the men who instinctively hesitate before the dense entanglement of branches bristling with thorns, and I in my turn bodily fling myself into the undergrowth. To the left of my trench ring out oaths and strangled cries. Apparently, some fools afraid of the thorns have hesitated too long and now perhaps have German bayonets in back or chest! I start to run towards the chasseurs' line. Before me and all around me dark shadows move; and always the same cry rings out: "Hurrah! Vorwärts!" I am surrounded by Boches; it seems impossible that I can escape, separated as I am from all my men. Nevertheless I grasp my revolver in my hand and pray only I may be permitted to give a good account of myself.