each division, but
they handle them more cleverly, and their fire is much more effective
than ours.

"In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and
some of our artillery was posted thereabout. Presently a German
aeroplane came overhead, circling round in reconnoissance; but it was
out for more than that. Suddenly it began to drop bombs and, whether by
design or otherwise, they exploded in the middle of a field hospital.
One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a
bullet from one of these bombs, but I don't know what other casualties
there were. The inevitable happened shortly after the disappearance of
the aeroplane. German shells searched the position and found it with
unpleasant accuracy. It is always the same. The German aeroplanes are
really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns.
We always know that within half an hour of observation by aeroplane
shells will begin to fall above gunners, unless they have altered their
position. It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

"For four days this hunting among the villages on the left bank of the
Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy with ourselves.
The truth was we had no water and were four days thirsty. It was really
terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some of us were
almost mad with thirst. Our tongues were blistered and swollen, our eyes
had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had horrid dreams. It
was, I assure you, intolerable agony.

"I have said we were four days without drink, and that was because we
used our last water for our horses. A gentleman has to do that, you will
agree, and a French soldier is not a barbarian. Even then the horses had
to go without a drop of water for two days, and I'm not ashamed to say I
wept salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor, innocent creatures
who did not understand the meaning of all this bloody business and who
wondered at our cruelty.

"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, and at
every faint puff of wind sparks floated about them like falling stars.

"But other fires were burning. Under the cover of darkness the Germans
had piled the dead into great heaps and had covered them with straw and
paraffin; then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres.

"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own
comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wak