What our General has just heard has caused him no anxiety. He has answered, “All is well,” as if the menace could in no way alter his plans. Later on this recollection, throwing light on the phrase which had almost shocked me, was to assume a singularly precise outline in my mind, and to widen like those ripples which are formed in water when a stone is flung in and grow larger and larger until they reach the banks.... IV THE FIRST FIGHTS ROUND VAUX (MARCH 9, 10, 11) From the road, I see soldiers stretched out on the grass, basking in the spring sun, fishing in the river, or playing ball like schoolboys. Motor-omnibuses picked them up suddenly, not far from the Verdun battlefield, to carry them to this abode of rustic peace. They do not even hear the guns any longer. It is strange to contrast this bucolic scene with the fiery furnace of Vaux. Among the valleys of the Meuse region, which are generally rather grim and gloomy, the valley of La Saulx is the most smiling, the richest in flowers, the most attractive. A crystal-clear brook waters its meadows and seems, with all its meanderings, to run an endless course. Here is Montiers-sur-Saulx, where the 303rd Brigade is billeted for a few days. The Sire de Joinville lived there; in the archives of the town hall one may read the charter by which he allowed the villagers the use of a part of his forest. Jeanne d’Arc went through it, dreaming of her mission. The troops in blue-grey caps who stroll round the central square where the military band plays are not so very different, in their bright uniforms, from the men-at-arms of bygone days. In little groups the men walk about, light their pipes, and chat with the natives. The whole scene looks like a day of peace-time manœuvres, and the very gait of the men is so brisk that one might fancy them to be fresh troops recently detrained here and ready to proceed again to the front. Yet the sentry who is mounting guard at the town hall wears a cap that has been pierced by a bullet. Other caps are indented or knocked out of shape. More than one of these peaceful ramblers has his head bandaged or shows some scar on his face. The colonel in command of the brigade has on his cheek a sabre-cut on which the blood has just dried--a trifling wound which has not been deemed worthy of dressing. These are the men who broke the back of the German assaults on the village and fort of Vaux on March 8, 9, and 10. They can scarcely remember that they forced the enemy to retreat; they are too much occupied with forgetting their miseries--the cold, the snow, the lack of sleep, the long hours they spent crouching down in rifle-pits, their lost comrades, the continual presence of death during the bombardment which shatters men’s nerves and stuns their brains.