Again a semblance of a village appears, the last through which I shall pass, for those which are distant landmarks on the road that leads towards the barbarians, are nothing more now than hapless heaps of stone resembling barrows. This village, too, be it understood, is three-quarters in ruins; there remain fragments of walls in grotesque shapes, letting in the daylight and displaying a black marbling of soot where the chimneys used to be. But many soldiers are gaily having their breakfast in the purely imaginary shelter afforded them by these remains of houses. There are pay-sergeants even, who are seated unconcernedly at improvised tables, busy with their writing. Bang! A shell! It is a shell hurled blindly and from a great distance by the barbarians, without definite purpose, merely in the hope that it may succeed in hurting someone. It has fallen on the ruins of a roofless stable, where some poor horses are tethered, and here are two of them who have been struck down and are lying bellies upwards and kicking out, as they do when they are dying; they stain the snow crimson with blood spurting from their chests in jets, as if forced from a pump. The village soon disappears in the distance, and I enter this no man's land, always rather a solemn region, which from end to end along the front indicates the immediate neighbourhood of the barbarians. The March sun, astonishingly strong, beats down upon this tragic desert where great sheets of white snow alternate with broad, mud-coloured surfaces. And now whenever my car stops and pauses, for some reason or other, and the engine is silent, the noise of the cannon is heard more and more loudly. At last I reach the farthest point to which my car can convey me; if I took it on farther it would be seen by the Boches, and the shells that are roaming about here and there in the air would converge upon it. It must be safely bestowed, together with my chauffeurs, in a hollow of the undulating ground, while I continue my journey alone on foot.