o, there is no firing against us. The wide
exodus of the battalion out of the ground seems to have passed
unnoticed! This truce is full of an increasing menace, increasing. The
pale light confuses us.

On all sides the slope is covered by men who, like us, are bent on the
descent. On the right the outline is defined of a company that is
reaching the ravine by Trench 97--an old German work in ruins. We cross
our wire by openings. Still no one fires on us. Some awkward ones who
have made false steps are getting up again. We form up on the farther
side of the entanglements and then set ourselves to topple down the
slope rather faster--there is an instinctive acceleration in the
movement. Several bullets arrive at last among us. Bertrand shouts to
us to reserve our bombs and wait till the last moment.

But the sound of his voice is carried away. Abruptly, across all the
width of the opposite slope, lurid flames burst forth that strike the
air with terrible detonations. In line from left to right fires emerge
from the sky and explosions from the ground. It is a frightful curtain
which divides us from the world, which divides us from the past and
from the future. We stop, fixed to the ground, stupefied by the sudden
host that thunders from every side; then a simultaneous effort uplifts
our mass again and throws it swiftly forward. We stumble and impede
each other in the great waves of smoke. With harsh crashes and
whirlwinds of pulverized earth, towards the profundity into which we
hurl ourselves pell-mell, we see craters opened here and there, side by
side, and merging in each other. Then one knows no longer where the
discharges fall. Volleys are let loose so monstrously resounding that
one feels himself annihilated by the mere sound of the downpoured
thunder of these great constellations of destruction that form in the
sky. One sees and one feels the fragments passing close to one's head
with their hiss of red-hot iron plunged in water. The blast of one
explosion so burns my hands that I let my rifle fall. I pick it up
again, reeling, and set off in the tawny-gleaming tempest with lowered
head, lashed by spirits of dust and soot in a crushing downpour like
volcanic lava. The stridor of the bursting shells hurts your ears,
beats you on the neck, goes through your temples, and you cannot endure
it without a cry. The gusts of death drive us on, lift us up, rock us
to and fro. We leap, and do not know whither we go. Our eyes a