The best trench is not proof against a real bombardment of heavy shells. Parapets crumble in like walls of sand. There is nothing reassuring about coming suddenly upon a great gaping hole in what has been considered a moment before a solid rampart, a hole still steaming from the impact of a white hot shell weighing half a ton. It does not add to one's confidence to find that instead of walking quietly along a well ordered corridor with a decent, dry plank floor one is crossing a miniature mountain chain, sinking suddenly into narrow valleys, waist deep in water, rising as suddenly to heights that leave half one's body exposed to the full view of the enemy. And to know that those valleys and those heights have been caused by the explosion in the trench of the shells that are constantly screaming overhead--that is the most disconcerting of all. Such was the position we were in when I first saw Léon Barbèsse. We had come to a comparatively quiet spot. The shells whined above us or exploded in the barbed wire in front, but they had not found the trench. We stopped to take stock, to look about us, to get our breath, to straighten our backs and get a new thought in our minds, something except where the next shell would land. And standing in front of us in the trench, some ten feet away, I saw a bearded soldier with the stripes of a sergeant and the ribbon of the _Medaille Militaire_--the highest honor any French soldier, from ranking general down, can win--and the _Croix de Guerre_ with two palms, meaning that he had been mentioned twice for conspicuous bravery in the general orders of the army. Despite his beard he was a young man, well under thirty, and he stood with a quiet air of confidence and looked at us with a certain amusement. Five minutes later we were all distributed at the bottoms of various deep shelters. The shells had begun to fall on the section of trench where we were, and we had been ordered underground. I had descended eighteen steep steps, a matter of twenty feet, and found myself in a little, low celled, earth walled, square chamber, with six bunks in double tiers taking up three sides and the narrow door in the fourth side. The bearded soldier was in our party. He had preceded me and lent me a helping hand down the ladder-like stairs. When we were safe in the cave he lighted a candle and pulled up an empty shell box for me to sit on. "You are safe here," he said. "That is all right," I replied. "I want to know why you smiled at us when we came up. We had come across pretty dangerous ground." "I know you had," he said. "That was why I smiled. You know now something more of what it means to be a soldier. You don't know very much. You can go back and tell of the narrow escape you had, and you need never come again. But for a few minutes, when you were under that rain of shells, you knew the glory of war. You prayed. That was why I smiled." II--THE CONFESSION OF A SLACKER