_Saint-André._ On a hillock just beyond the village we come upon the remains of a dressing-station. The site is marked by a fine confusion. Red-haired cowhide cases scattered about, all yawning and emptied of their contents; bayonets in their black sheaths; severed cartridge-belts; helmets without their spikes; linen torn and stained with mud and blood; packages of dressings by the hundred; pieces of cotton wool saturated by the rain lying in the middle of tiny blood-stained pools. The great trees rising above the hillock seem to be contemplating this sad chaos, while the rain drips from their branches softly and unceasingly. We pass before Souilly. A windmill for raising water spreads its giant sails fanwise over a huge grey metal armature. Some silent houses which have escaped the shells: the melancholy of deserted houses which is almost as poignant as the sadness that clings to ruins. A halt under the rain and quarters at Sivry-la-Perche, in a barn with green doors like all those on the Meuse. Rifles are piled on the threshing-floor, knapsacks hung on the pegs. The granary dominates the neighbourhood and is full of hay and straw. So lofty is it, that the walls become lost to sight in the darkness before meeting the rafters. _September 15th-17th._ Yet one more long march, this time straight across the entrenched camp of Verdun. Thierville is our nearest point to the citadel. Beneath a rainy sky, crossed by light clouds, lies Verdun, marked by its barracks with their roofs of coloured tiles, and the aviation field with its white hangars, and the towers of its cathedral rising high above trees and houses. All the surrounding villages are alive with troops. Many questions are flung about as we pass through. Many of the men rush to the public fountains whose water flows into a stone basin, swallow a quart or so in long gulps, and fill their flasks. The weight of my own flask at my belt gives me a sense of comfort--it is a German flask which Pannechon brought me yesterday, and which I have duly appropriated. The Meuse. Cattle in the meadows. Then Bras and afterwards Vachérauville. Three weeks only have elapsed since I passed along this self-same road. Is it credible? It is a fact, nevertheless, although I find it difficult to convince myself of the reality of it. For what have I not experienced in the way of new and intense sensations, what a richness of impressions I have acquired, what dangers run? How altogether undreamed of has that life been! Confusion about me and within me; then habit swiftly succeeding the chaos of the early days. Three weeks only since I passed along this road, a very raw recruit, and now here am I a seasoned soldier.