e clearing out. You'll get along all right, eh?"

News passes among us like a breeze. "The Moroccans and the 21st Company
are in front of us. The attack is launched on our right."

The corporals are summoned to the captain, and return with armsful of
steel things. Bertrand is fingering me; he hooks something on to a
button of my greatcoat. It is a kitchen knife. "I'm putting this on to
your coat," he says.

"Me too!" says Pepin.

"No," says Bertrand, "it's forbidden to take volunteers for these
things."

"Be damned to you!" growls Pepin.

We wait, in the great rainy and shot-hammered space that has no other
boundary than the distant and tremendous cannonade. Bertrand has
finished his distribution and returns. Several soldiers have sat down,
and some of them are yawning.

The cyclist Billette slips through in front of us, carrying an
officer's waterproof on his arm and obviously averting his face.
"Hullo, aren't you going too?" Cocon cries to him.

"No, I'm not going," says the other. "I'm in the 17th. The Fifth
Battalion's not attacking!"

"Ah, they've always got the luck, the Fifth. They've never got to fight
like we have!" Billette is already in the distance, and a few grimaces
follow his disappearance.

A man arrives running, and speaks to Bertrand, and then Bertrand turns
to us--

"Up you go," he says, "it's our turn."

All move at once. We put our feet on the steps made by the sappers,
raise ourselves, elbow to elbow, beyond the shelter of the trench, and
climb on to the parapet.

* * * * *

Bertrand is out on the sloping ground. He covers us with a quick
glance, and when we are all there he says, "Allons, forward!"

Our voices have a curious resonance. The start has been made very
quickly, unexpectedly almost, as in a dream. There is no whistling
sound in the air. Among the vast uproar of the guns we discern very
clearly this surprising silence of bullets around us--

We descend over the rough and slippery ground with involuntary
gestures, helping ourselves sometimes with the rifle. Mechanically the
eye fastens on some detail of the declivity, of the ruined ground, on
the sparse and shattered stakes pricking up, at the wreckage in the
holes. It is unbelievable that we are upright in full daylight on this
slope where several survivors remember sliding along in the darkness
with such care, and where the others have only hazarded furtive glances
through the loopholes. N