It was the day after the battle of Charleroi, and whilst our troops were retiring in good order, my men and I, after the fashion of many other small detachments, were holding a German battery in check. So near were we to the enemy that we could hear the harsh, guttural commands of the artillery officers--so different from the tone of _camaraderie_ we adopt towards our men in the truly democratic army of France--and could see them, though indistinctly, urging on their men to the attack. From our trenches on a wooded knoll on the outskirts of Beaumont, we kept up a steady fire on those who were serving the guns, around which the Boches, falling like flies, quickly began to accumulate in heaps. Fresh men incessantly replaced those who had fallen, who at last lay in such numbers that the officers, in order to make room for the gunners, had the dead dragged away to the rear by the feet. Company after company of men fell in this way until the German officers, who had either been shot or had decided to withdraw, could be heard no more. A lull occurred. Bringing my glasses to bear on the battery, I could see no sign of life save the convulsive movements of a few of the prostrate men around the guns. "It looks as though they had had enough," said I, to my friend Marcel, a private who comes from the same place as myself--Loctudy, in Brittany. "I wonder if we could capture those guns?" Before he had time to answer a hurricane of bullets came from a hidden machine-gun, and one of them found its billet. My poor friend, shot through the head, fell into my arms. We laid him gently down, thinking of the sad news that would have to be broken to a sorrowing mother at home, and then, anger mingling with regret in our hearts, once more directed our attention to the invisible enemy, in whose direction we hastened to send our compliments in the form of a stream of _prunes_. Overhead we could hear the humming of one of our aeroplanes, and through an opening in the tree-tops momentarily caught sight of it as it moved over the German lines, reconnoitering. Rings of smoke from bursting shrapnel broke far beneath it. Its mission over, it moved swiftly back to our lines, and within ten minutes Marcel and many other brave fellows were avenged. Our "75's" got the range of the battery in front of us with marvellous exactitude, and for five minutes poured upon it such a rain of shells as to make it seem impossible that anything could live within a distance of a hundred yards. The dead around the guns were scattered like chaff in a high wind. A great silence followed that series of violent explosions. For five minutes, in accordance with orders, the men were busy cutting steps with their entrenching tools in our trench, so as to spring out of it quickly and proceed to capture the guns. Caution prompted another five minutes' wait, during which there was not a sign of life before us.