few of our shrapnel burst over these positions. Bang! And the enemy
was gone. Suddenly a ball of red fire appeared in the first French
trench. This meant--shells fall ahead of trenches; place shots further
back. Just then, over a front of one and a half kilometers, a whole
brigade of Frenchmen rose from the trenches, shoulder to shoulder, a
thing I had never seen before. We have to admire them for their
courage. In front, the officers about four or five steps in the lead;
behind them, in a dense line, the men, partly negroes, whom we could
recognize by their baggy trousers. The whole line moved on a run. For
the first four hundred meters (in all they had seven hundred meters to
cover) we let them come without firing. Then we let them have our
first shrapnel. As the artillery knew the exact range, the first shots
were effective. Then came the heavier shells. We now opened a
murderous fire; it was so loud that we could not hear each other at
two paces. Again and again our shells struck the dense masses and tore
huge gaps in them, but, in spite of this, the attack continued. The
gaps were always quickly closed. Now our infantry took a hand. Our men
stood up in the trenches, exposed from the hips up, and fired like
madmen. After three or four minutes the attack slackened in spots;
that is, parts of the line advanced, others could not. After a quarter
of an hour the French on our left wing, which I could see, reached our
trenches, shot and stabbed from above, and finally jumped in. Now we
could plainly see the hand-to-hand combat: heads bobbing back and
forth, guns clubbed (they seemed to be only trying to hit, not kill),
glistening bayonets, and a general commotion. On the right wing,
things progressed slower, almost at a standstill. In the middle a
group jumped forward now and then, and into them the artillery fired
with telling effect. We could see men running wildly about, they could
not escape our artillery fire. The whole slope was strewn with bodies.
After about a quarter of an hour the Frenchmen started to retreat.
First one, then two, then three, came out of our trenches, looked all
around, and started for their own trenches. In the meantime more
troops came up from the rear. But after the first few started to run
more came out of the trenches, until finally all were out and
retreating. Our men also got out to be able to fire at the retreating
enemy to better advantage. Again and again the French officers tried
to cl