“The dreariness of the landscape is beyond description. At this moment (7 P.M.) it is bathed in the soft, warm, purple light of the setting sun. The ridges of the hill are bare, without a blade of grass. The Fumin Wood is reduced to a few tree-stumps ranged like the teeth of a comb along its summit, like that wood of ‘the Hand of Massiges’ which our troopers have nicknamed ‘the Cock’s Comb.’ The soil has been so much churned up by the shells that the earth has become as shifting as sand, and the shell-holes make the place look like a range of dunes. “All of a sudden the cannonade, which had slackened off a little, breaks out in all its fury. In one minute we count eight Boche shells whistling over our heads. “On the ridge of Vaux, which shows up purple against the setting sun, the black clouds of our 155’s rise in every direction. It is an orchestra of Hell. “The Commandant’s office is a shell-hole covered with a few beams and a little earth. Under the floor are corpses, perhaps those whom the shell has buried. “The occupants go to sleep on the floor, their heads resting on their knapsacks. “The men are crowded together in recesses that certainly would not shelter them from the rain. “Let us wait! “_Friday the 19th._--The cannonade never stops day or night. It deafens our ears and clouds our brains. “To-day, since 6 P.M., the hillsides of Vaux have been disappearing under our shell-fire. “From here one can see them falling right on to the white lines formed in the ground by the Boche trenches and communication passages. “At night, in the starlight, green rockets shoot up from our front lines at the bottom of the ravines. ‘Lengthen the range! Lengthen the range!’ cry our poor comrades. “Other shouts are then heard from all sides. “Red rockets on the Hardaumont plateau. We are attacked. Fire, lads, fire! Bar the way in front of our trenches! “Red rockets from Fort Vaux. Red rockets down there, far off, behind Fumin. How many desperate appeals all over this gloomy countryside! “Meanwhile, the Boches from their lines send up other kinds of rockets, trench flares or ‘star-shells.’ These flash forth from the darkness every moment in order to ensure that no shovelful of earth shall be removed by the victims marked out for annihilation by the shells. “The whistling of the projectiles which cross each other above our heads is so loud that you might imagine yourself to be by the sea, with the swell of the waves, as they rise and fall, crashing in your ears. The explosions, with their tremendous uproar, produce the effect of a continual thunderstorm, accompanied by periodic flashes of lightning.