abrupt hillside of the fortress, had been used as a place of
encampment and had been trodden into a surface of thick cheesy mire.
Here and there were the ashes of fires. There were hundreds of such
places round the moorland villages between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. The
fort looked squarely down on Verdun, and over its grassy height came the
drumming of the battle, and the frequent crash of big shells falling
into the city.

In a corner lay the anatomical relics of some horses killed by an
air-bomb the day before. And even as I noted them, I heard the muffled
Pom! Pom! Pom! of anti-aircraft guns. My back was to the river and I
could not see what was going on.

"What is it?" I said to a Zouave who was plodding along beside the
ambulance.

"Des Boches--crossing the river."

The regiment plodded on as before. Now and then a soldier would stop and
look up at the aeroplanes.

"He's coming!" I heard a voice exclaim.

Suddenly, the adjutant whom I had seen before came galloping down the
line, shouting, "Arretez! Arretez! Pas de mouvement!"

A current of tension ran down the troop with as much reality as a
current of water runs down hill. I wondered whether the Boche had seen
us.

"Is he approaching?" I asked.

"Yes."

Ahead of me was a one-horse wagon, and ahead of that a wagon with two
horses carrying the medical supplies. The driver of the latter, an
oldish, thick-set, wine-faced fellow, got down an instant from his
wagon, looked at the Boche, and resumed his seat. A few seconds later,
there sounded the terrifying scream of an air-bomb, a roar, and I found
myself in a bitter swirl of smoke. The shell had fallen right between
the horses of the two-horse wagon, blowing the animals to pieces,
splintering the wagon, and killing the driver. Something sailed swiftly
over my head, and landed just behind the ambulance. It was a chunk of
the skull of one of the horses. The horse attached to the wagon ahead of
me went into a frenzy of fear and backed his wagon into my ambulance,
smashing the right lamp. In the twinkling of an eye, the soldiers
dispersed. Some ran into the fields. Others crouched in the wayside
ditch. A cart upset. Another bomb dropped screaming in a field and
burst; a cloud of smoke rolled away down the meadow.

When the excitement had subsided, it was found that a soldier had been
wounded. The bodies of the horses were rolled over into the ditch, the
wreck of the wagon was dragged to the miry field, and