Nevertheless the Colonel of the 101st makes his arrangements for the battle in the manner of an eminent orchestra conductor. He stations his reserves as a barrier in the wood, seeks and finds his connections in the Fontaines ravine, and has the ground dug into in order to gain a better grip on it. All the ensuing night he will make his men work without a break, profiting by the uncertainty as to the time that paralyses the enemy’s artillery, in order to find cover and to organize his front between R¹ and the ravine. The redoubt R¹ is besieged from the evening of June 1. Two machine-guns, sweeping the hillsides, damp the enemy’s ardour: in front of their range of fire, one sees clumps of grey bodies stretched out on the ground. In our trenches the scene is already a tragic one: “Everywhere the stones have been splashed with red drops. In places, great pools of violet-coloured, viscous blood have been formed, and cease to spread. Half-way along the communication trench, in the bright sunshine, corpses are lying, stiff and stark under their blood-stained canvas. Everywhere there are piles of débris of all kinds: empty tins of canned food, disembowelled knapsacks, helmets riddled with holes, rifles shattered and splashed with blood. In the midst of these ghastly heaps a white shirt flutters, hideous with red clots. An intolerable stench poisons the air. To crown it all, the Boches send us some tear-shells, which make the air impossible to breathe. And the heavy hammer-blows of the shells never cease from echoing all around us.” This is the picture of that June evening drawn by Captain Delvert, who is in command of the defence of R¹. R¹ will hold out until the 8th, and will not be taken until the night of June 8-9. Just as an artist makes a rough cast before carving the statue in marble, so the defence of the redoubt is a sketch, in miniature, of the defence of the fort. As regards this episode of the fort, it is best not to interrupt the story, but to follow it to the end, looking ahead for a while. In any case, R¹ fights a lonely battle, unconscious of what is going on at its right or its left, not knowing whether the fort is alive or dead, imagining that it is still guarding one of the fort’s flanks, when the enemy has already succeeded in passing between the entrenchment and the counterscarp. He who led the resistance has a peculiar right to act as its historian. Here, then, is a portion of Captain Delvert’s admirable notes, from June 2 up to the evening of the 5th, when he was relieved: _Captain Delvert’s Diary, June 2-5_