But she draws from beneath her apron a dusty bottle. "I must 'recompinse' you somehow. There is not very much in it, but what there is tastes good. It is good: oh, but indeed it is!" It is Toul wine, dry, thin and somewhat sharp. A brawn, turned out on to a plate, gives us an excellent lunch. In the afternoon we pass to the observation trench. We overtake a group of lame men, without weapons, coats open, almost all of them limping along with a stick. Among them I recognize a friend of pre-war days. We shake hands and speak eagerly and with pleasure of common memories, before approaching the inevitable regrets. As he belonged to a regiment which was compelled to give way before the Boches, I asked him how it had come about. He shrugged his shoulders despondently. "Masses of infantry; an endless hail of shell; not a gun to support us ... don't let's talk about it, old man." * * * * * The thunder of the 75's almost splits our ears. Occasionally a German shell flies past us with a shrill whistle and peppers the trees with a volley of shrapnel. Into the midst of this tumult we march and take up position. My section occupies about fifty yards of a trench already full of corpses. "Out with your tools," I say to my men, "and dig for all you are worth." VII--THE DEATH WAILS OF THE WOUNDED Night falls. The cold increases. It is that hour when, the battle ended, the wounded who have not yet been brought in, cry aloud in their suffering and distress. And those calls, those appealings, those moanings, awaken anguish in all those compelled to listen to them; an anguish the crueler for the fighters who are chained to their posts by stern duty yet who long to rush out to their gasping comrades, to dress their wounds, to speak words of comfort to them, and to carry them to safety where fires burn brightly and warm. Yet we must not do so; we are chained to the spot, our hearts wrung, our nerves quivering, shivering at the sound of soul-stricken cries brought to us unceasingly by the night. "A drink!..." "Are you going to leave me to die here?..." "Stretcher-bearers!..." "Drink!..." "Ah!..." "Stretcher-bearers!..." I hear some of my men say: "Where the devil are the stretcher-bearers!" ... (Censored.) ... "They are like fleas--you can never find them when you look for them." And before us the whole plain wrapped in darkness seems to shiver from the agony of those undressed wounds. Voices soft, weary from having cried so long: "... (Censored.) ... ....?" "Mother, oh, mother!" "Jeanne, little Jeanne.... Oh! say that you hear me, my Jeanne!" "I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty...." Voices in anguish, panting and gasping: "I won't die here like a rat!" "Stretcher-bearers! Stretcher-bearers!... Stretcher-bearers!!!" "... (Censored.) ... ....?" "You fellows, finish me off, for God's sake! Ah!..." A German not more than twenty yards away, cries out incessantly: