A magnificently monotonous memory, our march that day. It lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night. Its scene was a vast tableland, completely exposed, fields of beetroot alternating with fields of corn and oats. The harvest had been got in nearly everywhere. There were groups of stacks by the roadside. Directly we came out of the woods, we were marked by the hostile artillery. Their object was to stop us at any price by their tirs de barrage. The rumbling went on all day without a pause. It is impossible to give any idea of the horror of it. By midday, everyone of us was deaf.
The diabolical jaws of the horizon! Big and little German guns were talking. Our 75's retorted—rather feebly, it is true. The distance must have been too great, and apparently did not silence a single one of the enemy's batteries.
This plain was a hell, a hell: iron and fire, every imaginable peril, a conspiracy of the elements. To begin with, there was a continuous flight of Teuton aeroplanes above our heads, dropping bombs of different kinds, which fell with a muffled sound. The din of the big "coal-boxes," the shriek of the 77's, the[Pg 442] thunder-clap of explosions, and the columns of tainted smoke staking out the ground.
Our regiment went on advancing; so did one on our right and one on our left, and others farther away. Our soldiers were swarming as far as eye could see, a calm and regular deployment. We marched for a long time by platoons, in columns of four; then by platoons two deep; and at last in skirmishing order; each officer, each N.C.O., each connecting file in his place. The silence and impeccable order were in striking contrast with the blind fury of the projectiles. Mind against matter.
All our men had realised the solemnity of the task. Three quarters of them were experienced heroes, who had already fought ten times; the rest were raised to the same moral level by virtue of their surroundings. There could be nothing more impressive than this sustained and irresistible advance, under shell fire, of thousands and thousands of men who never fired a single shot.
By a miracle, our casualties, on the whole, were not very severe. What unflagging inspiration was shown by our leaders of all ranks! Imperceptible, serpentine movements protected each unit in turn from the mortal line of fire. How many times did we see a broadside of four "coal-boxes" fall just where we had been hardly thirty seconds before, or else where we would have been but for a fortunate zigzag! What hazard protected us? I protest that one was tempted to bow before a Providence, like De Valpic. The men betrayed this feeling, murmuring:
"We are blessed!"
We advanced at the double, lay down and got up again, just as at man?uvres. What am I saying?[Pg 443] Better than that. We kept our intervals and direction with incredible exactitude. There was not a straggler or funk among us. All honour to these proud troops, these splendid soldiers! They are dead—dead, nearly all of them. They appeared to feel, in the vague intuition of their flesh, in the vibration of the nourishing air, that their end, even if they survived to-morrow's sanguinary triumph, was inscribed on the pages of the disastrous winter or the fatal spring to come. There was no sadness or despair, but something indescribably resigned and shy crept into their gait. Joking was out of date. Judsi himself had put a damper on his animation. We kept on and gained ground. At one point—the wonders could not be repeated indefinitely—a single rafale on our left mowed down about forty men. We did not slacken our pace—hardly turned our heads.
We went on in a rising tide, and I thought how the sight of this inexorable multitude rolling towards them, like God's judgment, must strike terror into the hearts of the enemy's gunners.
At the end of the day we neared a wood. I was very much afraid lest the hostile infantry might be hidden there, watching for us. Those barricades of trees looked most suspicious. Our reconnoitring patrol went on ahead of us. I trem............