wers; the moonlight was blue on the
common. Eight sanitars were waiting to start. The Feldscher
in charge of them did not, I thought, seem greatly pleased
when he saw me, but then I am often stupidly sensitive; no
one said anything and we started. We carried two stretchers
and a soldier from the trenches was with us to guide us.

I could see that the men were not happy. I heard one of them
mutter to another that they should not have been sent now;
that they should have waited until the attack was over ...
"and the full moon.... Did any one ever see such a moon?"

We came to cross-roads and advanced very carefully.

As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement.
The noise around us was terrific and different from any
noise that I heard before. I did not think at the time, but
was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost
directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position
about whose possession the battle was being fought), that
the noise was so tremendous. The echo flung everything back
so that each report sounded three or four times. This
certainly had the strangest effect--a background as it were
of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close
and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and
then suddenly an absolutely _smashing_ effect as though some
one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals
one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head
and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns. At every
_smashing_ noise the sanitars, who were, I believe,
schoolmasters and little clerks, and therefore of a more
sensitive head than the peasant soldier, ducked their heads,
and one fat red-faced man tried to lie down flat on two
occasions and was cursed heartily by the Feldscher. I myself
felt no fear but only a pounding exhilarating excitement,
because I was at last "really in it." We found one wounded
man very soon, lying under the hedge with the top of his
head gone. Four sanitars (their relief showed very plainly
in their faces) returned with him. We advanced again,
skirting now a little orchard and keeping always in the
shadow under the hedge. Our guide, the soldier, assured us
that the wounded man was "very near--quite close." Then we
came to a la