es,
on all-fours, crawling towards the way of retreat: "Get on, allez, get
on!"

But the long file stayed motionless, and the frenzied complaints were
in vain. They who were down there at the end would not budge, and their
inactivity immobilized the rest. Some wounded passed over the others,
crawling over them as over debris, and sprinkling the whole company
with their blood.

We discovered at last the cause of the maddening inactivity of the
detachment's tail--"There's a barrage fire beyond."

A weird imprisoned panic seized upon the men with cries inarticulate
and gestures stillborn. They writhed upon the spot. But little shelter
as the incipient trench afforded, no one dared leave the ditch that
saved us from protruding above the level of the ground, no one dared
fly from death towards the traverse that should be down there. Great
were the risks of the wounded who had managed to crawl over the others,
and every moment some were struck and went down again.

Fire and water fell blended everywhere. Profoundly entangled in the
supernatural din, we shook from neck to heels. The most hideous of
deaths was falling and bounding and plunging all around us in waves of
light, its crashing snatched our fearfulness in all directions--our
flesh prepared itself for the monstrous sacrifice! In that tense moment
of imminent destruction, we could only remember just then how often we
had already experienced it, how often undergone this outpouring of
iron, and the burning roar of it, and the stench. It is only during a
bombardment that one really recalls those he has already endured.

And still, without ceasing, newly-wounded men crept over us, fleeing at
any price. In the fear that their contact evoked we groaned again, "We
shan't get out of this; nobody will get out of it."

Suddenly a gap appeared in the compressed humanity, and those behind
breathed again, for we were on the move.

We began by crawling, then we ran, bowed low in the mud and water that
mirrored the flashes and the crimson gleams, stumbling and falling over
submerged obstructions, ourselves resembling heavy splashing
projectiles, thunder-hurled along the ground. We arrive at the
starting-place of the trench we had begun to dig.

"There's no trench--there's nothing."

In truth the eye could discern no shelter in the plain where our work
had begun. Even by the stormy flash of the rockets we could only see
the plain, a huge and raging desert. The trench could