all directions, and
behind me I heard the heavy sound of men and horses falling on the
hard ground. In my troop a horse without a rider broke away and came
galloping towards me. What did it matter? Forward! Forward!

We were about 200 yards off. We spurred our horses and got into our
stride.

Suddenly a horrible fear took the place of the martial joy that had
urged us to the fight. We were all struck by the same discouragement,
the same feeling of impotence, the same conviction of the uselessness
of our sacrifice. We had just realised that the edge of the wood was
surrounded with wire, and that it was behind this impassable barrier
that the Prussians were calmly firing at us as at a target. What was
to be done? How could we get at them and avenge our fellows who had
fallen? For one second a feeling of horror and impotent rage passed,
like a deep wave, over the squadron. The bullets whistled past us.

But the Captain adopted the wisest course. He saw that retreat was
necessary. He had, behind him, more than a hundred human lives, and
felt they must be saved for better and more useful sacrifices. With a
voice that rose above the noise of the firing, he shouted: "Follow me,
in open order!" And he spurred in an oblique direction towards the
nearest depression in the ground. But the movement was badly carried
out. The men, disheartened, instead of spreading out like a flight of
sparrows, rushed off in so compact a body that some more horses were
knocked over by the Prussian bullets. How long those few seconds
seemed to us! I wondered by what sort of miracle it was that we did
not lose more men. But what an uncanny tune the innumerable bullets
made in our ears as they pursued us like angry bees!

At last we got under cover. Following a gully, the squadron reached a
little wood, behind which it was able to re-form. The sweating horses
snorted loudly. The men, sullen-mouthed and dejected, fell in without
a word and dressed the line.

In the fading light the roll was called by a non-commissioned officer
in a subdued voice, whilst I looked on distressfully at the sad
results of the useless charge. And yet our losses were not
great--three troopers only, slightly wounded, who, far from grumbling
at their mishap, seemed proud of the blood that stained their tunics
and their hands. The men whose horses had fallen had already come up
jogging heavily over the field of lucerne that stretched out before
us. One man alone was absen