With our advance the scene changed rapidly. We saw some autos overturned in a ditch and burning. Some dead horses stretched their rigid legs in the air. Under some tents men bustled about with stretchers, instruments, and boxes. These were the temporary dressing-stations, where the men wounded on the route were cared for: any who had met with accidents from vehicles, as well as those who had been hit by shell-splinters--for we had entered the zone of projectiles, and stray splinters reached even that far. The scene became indescribable. It was a mob, where one felt nevertheless a discipline, a sense of regulated, methodical order. We were in the side-wings of the battle, in the midst of its movable stage-settings, among the stage-hands, machinists, electricians, and supernumeraries, whose activities are unseen by the public, but who make it possible for the performance to go on and be brilliant. Long trains of horse-drawn caissons followed each other at full speed. Field-ambulances, marked with large red crosses, slipped into the moving stream. Vehicles of every sort, gray with dust or mud-bespattered, rumbled, creaked, rolled along, stopped, started, stuck in the ruts, freed themselves. The moving line looked like the folds of a fabulous serpent. The voice of the cannon increased in power and volume. It was like hearing an orchestra of inferno. The ear received only a tremendous, continuous roar, like the rolling of thunder which never ceases. We could see the earth tossed high like a geyser when a shell struck. We breathed the pungent odor of the battle. We were getting into it now. Most of the houses were demolished. The buildings still standing all bore the marks of war, with great ragged holes in walls and roof, with stains of powder and fire. Enough of them remained in close rows to indicate the streets leading into the town. We crossed the Meuse and found ourselves in the city. It appeared deserted. We looked curiously up and down the streets, without finding any sign of life whatever, except an occasional hurrying soldier, a cyclist, or an automobile racing at full speed between the silent houses. We made some détours, crossed squares, and skirted gardens. The whole city lay open to our view; and above the roofs the massive silhouette of the citadel spread its protecting wings. The locking of wheels gave us a jolt: we had arrived. Glad to tread the ground once more, we leaped down and entered an abandoned factory, where we were to camp. The windows had long since lost their glass, but the roof remained. It was a fragile protection against shells, but quite adequate against wind and rain. Along the walls was stacked dirty straw, broken to crumbs by the many sleeping troops. That was our bed. It would be for many their last sleep before the sleep of death, for the orders came immediately: we would mount to the first lines at nightfall.