lorries carrying troops
ground into town and disappeared to the eastward; big mortars mounted on
trucks came rattling over the pavements to go no one knew where; and
khaki-clad troops, troupes d'attaque, tanned Marocains and chunky,
bull-necked Zouaves, crossed the bridge over the Ornain and marched
away. At the turn in the road a new transparency had been erected, with
VERDUN printed on it in huge letters. Now and then a soldier, catching
sight of it, would nudge his comrade.

On the 18th we were told to be in readiness to go at any minute and
permissions to leave the barrack yard were recalled.

The attack began with an air raid on Bar-le-Duc. I was working on my
engine in the sunlit barrack yard when I heard a muffled Pom! somewhere
to the right. Two French drivers who were putting a tire on their car
jumped up with a "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ca?" We stood together looking
round. Beyond a wall on the other side of the river great volumes of
brownish smoke were rolling up, and high in the air, brown and silvery,
like great locusts, were two German aeroplanes.

"Nom d'un chien, il y'en a plusieurs," said one of the Frenchmen,
pointing out four, five, seven, nine aeroplanes. One seemed to hang
immobile over the barrack yard. I fancy we all had visions of what would
happen if a bomb hit the near-by gasoline reserve. Men ran across the
yard to the shelter of the dormitories; some, caught as we were in the
open, preferred to take a chance on dropping flat under a car. A
whistling scream, a kind of shrill, increasing shriek, sounded in the
air and ended in a crash. Smoke rolled up heavily in another direction.
Another whistle, another crash, another and another and another. The
last building struck shot up great tongues of flame. "C'est la gare,"
said somebody. Across the yard a comrade's arm beckoned me, "Come on,
we've got to help put out the fires!"

The streets were quite deserted; horses and wagons abandoned to their
fate were, however, quietly holding their places. Faces, emotionally
divided between fear and strong interest, peered at us as we ran by,
disappearing at the first whistle of a bomb, for all the world like
hermit-crabs into their shells. A whistle sent us both scurrying into a
passageway; the shell fell with a wicked hiss, and, scattering the
paving-stones to the four winds, blew a shallow crater in the roadway. A
big cart horse, hit in the neck and forelegs by fragments of the shell,
screamed hideousl