"Wounded in the neck; only a glancing bullet. Has returned slowly on an artillery horse. Midway among the shrapnels. Great fellow." Nobody knows where the point of reunion is. I lead the rest of the battalion after the other companies. Night is falling. Somewhere a cavalry patrol tells us: They're to bivouac over there at the fort. We march toward that. Bicycle men come to meet us. We hear from them--no one believed that a single man of us could escape that devil's caldron alive. My orderly (Bursche) comes riding to meet me. His eyes are wet. "My Captain! My Captain!" I must press many hands. I warm myself at the bivouac fire. The Quartermaster has brought me a half flask of champagne. There's red wine for the men in the baggage division. It has already been mulled. A plate of rice soup. The earth-crumb is still sticking to my lips. I swallow it down with the first draught of foaming wine: "I greet thee, Life! I greet thee, Earth!" And comrades come up and are glad to see me, old monster, again. Thank God, my company has suffered only few losses! When I order the Sergeant Major to read the list, only a few are missing. But this one or that one has been seen by some one of his comrades after the fight. Well, then they are only scattered, and will find their way back by and by. The battalion in these two days of fighting lost thirty-eight dead and sixty-six wounded. That includes some light wounds from glancing bullets. It all lies behind me like a confused dream. We are bivouacking in the casemates of the fort. I awake several times in terror. Deep, deep silence. Only the pacing to and fro of the sentinel on guard. To and fro, to and fro. He is cold. I creep deeper into the straw. Poor fellow, the sentinel. How soft I've got it! So warm here! I have hot eyes and hot cheeks, but ice-cold hands. I pity all those who know life and death only from books. War is a great teacher. We learn to love the earth. And thus our homeland becomes so sacred to us. Damp Humor of the Night Watch From a field postcard written by a German soldier in the Franco-Prussian war and sent home by one who recalled it under similar circumstances in the present one. I guard this shed, But who guards me? Around my head But night I see. This only comfort sweet is mine, To soothe my graveyard cough: "This town will pay a lovely fine If some one picks me off." War Correspondence The Place of Tombs By Perceval Gibbon. [Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.] Zyrddow, Poland, Received in London Jan. 19.--There is a spot above the river which must not be indicated too explicitly, but whose name signifies in Russian the place of tombs. It is thus christened by the troops who camp in a great forest which shadows the whole position. It is a point at which the new German plan of thrusting toward the railway instead of as hitherto toward the road has produced fighting of more than Homeric quality.