“‘Well, I can’t accept a whole mug! Just a mouthful, that’s all.’ “‘No, no, sir; it’s for you. Come on, V----, pass along some mugs; I shall need the mess-tin.’ “I give in without further resistance. I carefully put the mug aside. It will enable me to eat a biscuit. “What good fellows! What good fellows! “5 P.M.--The order for the relief has come. If only it isn’t countermanded! “We shall leave our dead in the trenches as a souvenir. Their comrades have piously laid them out of the way. I recognize them. Here is C----, with his velvet breeches; A----, poor youngster, of the 1916 class; and D----, stretching out his waxen hand, the hand that once flung bombs so valiantly; and P----, and G----, and L----, and so many others! “Alas! how many ghastly sentinels we leave behind! There they are, lying in a row on the breastwork, stiff and stark in their blood-stained, blood-dripping canvas,--grim and solemn guards of this nook of French soil where it seems that, even in death, they would fain bar the way to the enemy. “_9 o’clock_ P.M.--The relief.” * * * * * The uninterrupted bombardment, the fire in the neighbourhood of the grenade store, the daily onslaughts, the lack of provisions, the lack of water, the lack of sleep, the smell of the corpses and the asphyxiating shells, the mind preyed upon by the sense of death as the body is preyed upon by vermin,--these men have endured all. And because the sun is shining, the captain finds a song rising to his lips. “You are in good spirits, sir.” “Obviously. After all, when the die is cast----” The whole attitude of our soldiers is summed up in that phrase. A private as he passes exclaims with a laugh: “They’re not up to taking R¹, those Boches.” * * * * * Yes, the whole attitude is summed up in this: to stick to one’s post and to think nothing of self. The 6th Company of the 101st is relieved on June 5, in the evening, by a company of the 298th, which will hold out for three days longer, under more and more critical conditions, but will be outflanked in the night of June 8-9. The enemy has managed to make progress on the right. The fall of the fort, in the early morning of June 7, has given him a tactical point. R¹, however, throughout the whole siege of the fort, from June 2 to 7, has floated, like a fishing-boat that has mastered the waves, in the wake of the great vessel. III THE STRANGLEHOLD TIGHTENS IN THE EAST (JUNE 2) On June 2, at six o’clock in the morning, Colonel Tahon, commanding the 142nd Regiment, takes over the command of the sector stretching from Fort Vaux to Dicourt bottom, to the south-east of the fort.