exacts heavy toll; and in the rough
country hereabout it is impossible to discover the masked positions of
the sharpshooters and machine guns. The Frenchman is an expert in the
location of excellent hiding places, wire entanglements, and the like.
He even puts forth infinite efforts to make his fortified positions
extremely comfortable nests from which he can enjoy a view of all the
points at which, in the irregular lay of the land, the enemy must
necessarily halt; and thereupon the Frenchman meets the hesitating
column of attack with his concentrated fire.

Four guns are nibbling at the edge of the village with their shells.
Perhaps the machine guns, whose monotonous rattle lashes our nerves to
the snapping point, may be hidden there in the church tower. But the
battery commander hesitates to damage the house of God. So he leaves a
gap there, and sweeps the smaller houses. Suddenly one of the machine
guns ceases--it must have been concealed in the hedge close to the
church; the gun squad serving it must have been found by the fire of
our gunners; for presently there is noticeable in that quarter a foot
race of red-trousered infantrymen. In the moaning of the shells there
mingles the rattling of shrapnel. A whole group tumbles pell-mell;
yonder one of them dashes madly this way and that, until a new load
strikes him--they move like dolls in a miniature theatre; it is hard
to realize at this distance that human lives are being crushed out
here.

But an hour later we entered R. Night has fallen. Through the mighty
gaps in the gabled roofs of the houses of the narrow street on which
we enter shines the moon. Four men of the bicycle corps stand silent
at the entrance to the village; the prisoners in their midst,
infantrymen in uniform or in rapidly donned civil garb--the tell-tale
red of the trousers shows under the short vest of one of them. In the
streets lie curious bundles, the corpses of those who have fallen
here. A wounded soldier drags wearily up to the subaltern officer's
post, with hands raised above his head; it is a Frenchman who has
thrown away his blue coat, but still wears his cap. The steps of the
incoming battalion ring out on the village pavement. Otherwise an icy
silence, night, and the smell of blood and burning.

And now horror creeps over us. We greet Death. He greets us.

In R. scarcely a single house is still inhabited. All have fled to L.
In the street that has been assigned to my company, I mus