I take a steep declivity at full speed. Once or twice I fall full length in the mud. Another slope is negotiated in a sitting attitude. At the bottom of it I stumble, bruised from head to foot, into a little wood, where some soldiers stand, waiting orders, leaning on their rifles. Still more dismounted chasseurs! They too deploy, ascend the slope, and march unflinchingly into the inferno. The fight rages continuously behind me, as well as away to the left. For the third time I encounter dismounted chasseurs, formed up in sections. And one after another these sections breast the rising ground, reach the summit, where for a moment they remain clean-cut and distinct against the sky, and then plunge downwards into the heart of the fight. Another steep descent! I take it lying flat on my back, creating a veritable avalanche of stones and rubble. This deposits me in a well-sheltered, luxuriant little ravine. Almost irresistible is the desire that springs up in me to stretch myself full length among the fresh, fragrant grasses, to bathe my fevered face in the moisture, to lie still there and forget.... In a panic I force myself to my feet, afraid of losing grip! A 77 drops neatly into the hollow and explodes at the bottom of it. I receive a tremendous and disconcerting shock, while about me fragments of steel and lead plough and tear up the earth. In response to a command, some chasseurs suddenly appear at the edge of the ravine, and roll down exactly at the point where a few moments earlier I had descended. One of them jumps down, his legs quite stiff, blood trickling out of one of his boots from a smashed leg. "How pale you are," says a second-lieutenant who comes up. "Are you wounded?" "I don't think there is anything much the matter with me," I reply. "A bunch of shrapnel caught me in the knapsack fortunately." The wounds of the injured soldier are dressed. A second man lies prone and still, a bullet through his brain. Shells are hurrying over us now, carrying their shrill messages; a good number burst a little before us, and the echo of their harsh, metallic explosions is flung from one side of the ravine to the other. At each explosion huge, torn fragments of steel fly high above us across the sky. Columns of yellow smoke, dense and heavy, drift slowly through the still air, until they encounter the pines whose branches part and disperse them. "Do you know where I can find Colonel G----?" I ask the chasseur lieutenant. "Not exactly! Somewhere close at hand, I think. But the major will be able to inform you of his whereabouts." I find the major to be quite a young man, tall, with an expression at once frank and resolute. He listens to my mission and says: "That is quite all right. You will find the Colonel behind that wood there--at least he was there less than an hour ago. Some of the --th are entrenched on that slope. (Censored) ... "Go along, and good fortune go with you!"