'clock in the evening
until dawn. After describing three successive German assaults, during
which searchlights and flashlights played important parts, the Corporal
notes:

2:25 A.M.--All the Corporals run back for ammunition. We had expended a
hundred rounds each. Away we go to our ammunition reserve, hid in a big
hole twenty yards to the rear, and we come running back and distribute
packages of cartridges. Each man cleans his rifle. An hour passes in
silence, broken only by the intermittent volleys and by the moaning of
the wounded and dying, some of whom exclaim: "Kamarades, kamarades,
drink, drink!" We will look after them when the day breaks.

3:15--Here they come at us again. Bullets whistle over our heads. Our
Captain passes the order in whispers not to open fire until the bouches
sales reach our wire network, then to shoot like hell. We smile grimly
and keep still. Every minute the firing draws nearer. We await behind
our loopholes, now and then risking a peep through them. These loopholes
are only fifteen or twenty centimeters wide, but if a bullet comes
through them it is a skull pierced and certain death. This silent
waiting is a tremendous mental and nervous strain.

We keep still as mice, with clenched teeth. Luminous fuses, like roman
candles, burst forth in every direction, exploding in dust over our
heads. A moment later a dazzling signal light rocket bursts fifty yards
high, just above our trenches, lighting them up as clear as day for
several seconds. We crouch down under the lower parapet like moles.
Immediately afterward a mad fusillade, and the German .77 guns, having
got a better range than during the previous attacks, throw shells that
burst, luckily for us, nearly one hundred yards behind our trenches.
This attack must be general, for we hear fusillades cracking far away to
the right and left.

Suddenly we tremble in spite of ourselves. The hoarse sound of the short
German bugles pierces the night with four lugubrious notes in a minor
key, funereal, deathly. It is their charge. Yells, oaths, and
vociferations are heard in front of us. Our Captain commands us to fire
by volleys: "Aim! Fire!" "They must have felt something," drawls out
some one of us in a nasal, Montmartre-like voice. Then again: "Aim!
Fire!" What sport! Then comes the cric-crac-cric-crac, sewing
machine-like hammering of our mitrailleuses. Our Captain passes the
word: "Fire low! fire low! Aim! Fire!" Volley follows volley. The