"Lights" meant cards. Card-playing was permitted when the dug-outs were deep enough and there was a good thick tarpaulin to cover the entrance. Another muttered: --"How long are we going for?" A question that remained unanswered. In October, 1914, the war had not yet become an affair of administration, with a rota of reliefs, leave.... You never knew how long you would stay in bad trenches which you could not make up your mind to improve. It was not worth while. You might have been there a month already, but you would be certain to be moved off before the end of the week. I felt my way with my stick down the forest path, helped by three feet of light from the puny lantern which a soldier hid under his cloak. It is a trying experience to lead men by unfamiliar paths through a forest at night. Behind you the men, and even the officers, follow like sheep, their one concern being to avoid knocking their noses against the pack of the man in front--their sole horizon--at some sudden stop. The others could think of reliefs, their cards, their homes, anything.... But I was preoccupied solely with the necessity of keeping my sightless column on the right track. Nothing could be heard but the muffled tramping which wound along indefinitely behind me. The trees made a dark dome above our heads. Every now and then we looked up as we came to a clearing, but the sky was as dark as the vault of foliage. "Where is Lieutenant Vignerte?" "At the head, sir." A hand was placed on my shoulder. It was Vignerte's. Since our Captain left us after Craonne to command a battalion of another regiment, Raoul Vignerte, senior to me in the service, had been in command of the company. He was a man of twenty-five, slight, with a splendid dark head. Two months of war had done more than ten years of peace could have done to draw us together. We did now know each other before August, 1914, yet we had common memories of those bygone days. I came from Béarn, he from Landes. I had taken German at the Sorbonne. He, two years later, had taken history. Alternately jovial and absorbed, he was always a wonderful company commander. Occasionally the men found him a trifle distant, irresponsible, perhaps, but they liked his calm, soldierly bearing, his never-failing interest in their welfare. Vignerte did not sleep with the men, as I did. But they knew that if he kept his dug-out to himself it was invariably the most dilapidated, straw-less, and exposed he could find.