“Did it do well, your section?” asked Piétri, a red-haired sergeant-major, sturdy, with bloodshot eyes, a Corsican with the trick of staring you in the face, seeming to listen with his eyes, greedily, like a deaf man. “Did they do well? I believe you! My reservists were splendid. ‘The beasts!’ they cried. They were spoiling for the fight; they clenched their fists. The 10th battalion was proverbial. ‘The men at Provenchères are devils,’ said the Boches; it was we. “At the start it was like playing at soldiers. The Uhlans were coming on in little groups, their gloves spotless with pipeclay, wheeling to right and to left, as if on parade. Bram! Bram! Down goes one of them. The others perform a fantasia of retreat. We pursue. They dismount. I say to my men: ‘Lie down!’ Not a bit of it! They kneel to take better aim. ‘Fire!’ A lieutenant is killed; there are six dead or wounded. Another time, four Uhlans are trotting quietly along the road, as if on scouting duty. ‘Fire!’ Ten shots: patrol gone! Yes, it was funny at first. One might have imagined oneself at the summer manœuvres. But from the 10th to the 25th, oh Lord! Nothing but artillery fire. It rained! It rained, I tell you!” “Did you kill any Boches yourself?” asks big Corporal Durupt, compared in the 2nd to a buffalo’s head on a pikestaff. “In my section at Mesnil, near Senones, I handed my rifle to the bugler, a record shot. In a quarter of an hour, at two hundred yards, he brought down ten.” “I did my share,” answers Foch. “But the shot of which I am proudest was one which I fired at twelve hundred yards, just for a lark, at a Uhlan patrol. There were three of them; I bowled one of them over. But I will tell you about a shot of which my old comrade Kaiser was especially proud. An Alsatian like myself. I always gave him his orders in German. I don’t know if he’s still alive. I have not seen him since August 25th, when we were under machine gun fire in Bertrichamps wood. “In my section we had one odd sort of beast who was always in a blue funk. I kept him by my side as I led my section. The captain says to me: ‘Foch, see if you can’t stop this machine gun which is worrying us.’ Off we go, and soon the bullets are flying thickly. I meet an old territorial. He has his handkerchief pressed to a bleeding wound. I want to dress it for him. ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘don’t bother about me. Go ahead with your brave fellows!’ All at once my trembler falls down, crying out: “‘Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!’ “‘Are you wounded?’ “‘No, a sprain!’