The Boches are certainly not brilliant marksmen! They do not aim; their bullets either fly too high among the branches above us or fall short before us. And their bugles? And their drums? Their last charge is a feeble affair, broken, finished, dead! "Cease fire!" My men, hearing, pass the order along and cease fire, but keep their rifles ready, awaiting a new command. "Two rounds...." The command runs right along the line: "Two rounds ... two rounds ... two rounds." This is good! It is splendid! Only to think that a little time ago I wanted to step into the road swept by that machine-gun, in order to reassure my trembling men and avert a shameful _débâcle_ which I dreaded!... (Censored) (Censored) Little by little the firing dies away. We ourselves fire no longer, because we have consumed an enormous amount of ammunition; the nickel cases thickly cover the ground behind the pile of logs. It must be getting late; evening falls. Lassitude descends upon the woods and us. The craving for rest becomes insistent. There are gaps in our ranks which we only know and feel when calm succeeds the storm. The moment is come when the survivors gather together and count themselves, when they regain touch with each other, when closer contact seems in some sort to deaden the sense of loss. The order to leave the wood reaches us at the usual time; it is as though we had not been fighting at all. We have checked the rush of the Boches; we have killed hundreds of them, have decimated, dispersed and demoralized their attacking battalions. They will not advance again this evening; our day's work is done. And slowly, silently, through the woods on which the still peace of the autumn twilight now lies, we march and so regain the Mouilly road, the misty valley, and the Amblonville farm. In the clear, cool night, to the accompaniment of many voices, the sections assemble and line up, and the companies are reformed. How attenuated, how mutilated they look! My poor battalion! To-day's fight has once again cost us dearly. The 5th, which was so terribly cut up two weeks ago in the trenches at Vauxmarie, has also suffered cruelly again. As for my own men, I know only too well those who are missing. Lauche, my sergeant, the only one left to me since Vauxmarie--it is always Vauxmarie!--I had seen him, as Vauthier put it, clawing the grass at the bottom of the ditch; I knew he was gone already. There was big Brunet also, and several others struck down at my side. And when I told the corporals to step forward and call out the rolls of their squads, voices responded which were not theirs. In each case a man of the "first class" or old soldier stepped forward to say: "Corporal Regnard, wounded." Or: "Corporal Henry, killed." "And Morand?" "Corporal Morand, wounded," said an old soldier. "Is it serious?" "I do not think so, Lieutenant. He got a bullet in the arm as we were moving towards the pile of logs."