At eight o’clock in the morning the battalion of the colonial regiment which acts as a support still has no precise information about the operation that has been embarked upon, save that the two attacking battalions have not returned. Hence they have had to advance, and they need munitions to ward off the imminent counter-attacks. A fatigue party of eighty men is told off, under the command of a lieutenant and of Cadet Jacques Bégouen. They carry grenades, rockets, and Bengal fire to stake out our lines. Their progress can be followed in detail, thanks to Cadet Bégouen’s notes, from which I will quote a passage. He too, later on, will be among the chroniclers of the war. A son of Count Bégouen, whose historical learning is well known, he has two brothers serving with the colours--one of them, like himself, belongs to that heroic colonial regiment of Morocco which distinguished itself at Dixmude in December 1914, and which, in the battle of Verdun, added new lustre to its crown of glory. _From Cadet Bégouen’s Notebook_ “_June 8._ “So we have started in miscellaneous contingents to fulfil one of the most perilous missions, one where there is need of mutual knowledge among the men concerned and of good officers and N.C.O.’s who have confidence in you. “The guide marches slowly at our head. The men know their orders--all must follow. We go through a copse of dense undergrowth, where a deep communication trench is hidden, a place that cannot be taken under the enemy’s fire. We sink in the watery mud up to our calves. All is going well. “We have marched up the counter-slope, and are once more facing the German sausages. “At this point begins the zone of curtain fire and of mathematical pounding which stops only at the French first lines. “Having come to the end of the road, we climb the steep slope leading to the ridge. Already the trees and shrubs have been blasted by the firing.... The battering process begins. But the German sausages have not yet seen us, and we endure the usual punishment; barely fifty or sixty shells fall to the right and to the left of the little communication trench. “Before crossing the ridge, we take a brief rest. The first contingent, in front, continues its journey little by little. “Suddenly the guide says to me, ‘Where am I to lead you?’ ‘To the first line, I am told.’ ‘But I’ve got to stop at the Colonel’s headquarters.’ He does not know the way to the first line. We advance all the same. Here we are on the plateau where so much blood has been spilt: the communication trenches have become mere tracks, the forest a few sparse trunks stripped of their branches, the soil is made up of scraps of all kinds, and the corpses, lying in batches just as they fell, are in every conceivable attitude.... “I bid my men follow me, jumping across the shell-holes, and we begin marching for two hundred yards.