at the bivouac fire. The
Quartermaster has brought me a half flask of champagne. There's red
wine for the men in the baggage division. It has already been mulled.
A plate of rice soup. The earth-crumb is still sticking to my lips. I
swallow it down with the first draught of foaming wine: "I greet thee,
Life! I greet thee, Earth!" And comrades come up and are glad to see
me, old monster, again.

Thank God, my company has suffered only few losses! When I order the
Sergeant Major to read the list, only a few are missing. But this one
or that one has been seen by some one of his comrades after the fight.
Well, then they are only scattered, and will find their way back by
and by. The battalion in these two days of fighting lost thirty-eight
dead and sixty-six wounded. That includes some light wounds from
glancing bullets.

It all lies behind me like a confused dream. We are bivouacking in the
casemates of the fort. I awake several times in terror. Deep, deep
silence. Only the pacing to and fro of the sentinel on guard. To and
fro, to and fro. He is cold.

I creep deeper into the straw. Poor fellow, the sentinel. How soft
I've got it! So warm here! I have hot eyes and hot cheeks, but
ice-cold hands.

I pity all those who know life and death only from books. War is a
great teacher. We learn to love the earth. And thus our homeland
becomes so sacred to us.

Damp Humor of the Night Watch

From a field postcard written by a German soldier in the
Franco-Prussian war and sent home by one who recalled it
under similar circumstances in the present one.

I guard this shed,
But who guards me?
Around my head
But night I see.
This only comfort sweet is mine,
To soothe my graveyard cough:
"This town will pay a lovely fine
If some one picks me off."

War Correspondence

The Place of Tombs

By Perceval Gibbon.

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

Zyrddow, Poland, Received in London Jan. 19.--There is a spot above
the river which must not be indicated too explicitly, but whose name
signifies in Russian the place of tombs. It is thus christened by the
troops who camp in a great forest which shadows the whole position. It
is a point at which the new German plan of thrusting toward the
railway instead of as hitherto toward the road has produced fighting
of more than Homeric quality.

The Russians, who never misjudge the value of ground, we