Two sapper-miners were arguing and this is what took place:
"You ought to be ashamed to be always in F gallery--it won't be blown up by the enemy for two months. It's always the same with you fellows who go in for this kind of fighting----
A WALK IN THE FOG, CALONNE TRENCH. _December_, 1915.
There is a thick, heavy fog here this morning----
One can stand on the parapet, where, two hours afterwards, he would be pierced like a sieve.
It gives one a very curious sensation to go several steps in front of the trench, over the snow, to reconnoitre the terrain ahead of us.
And it is quite different to inspect this sombre place which we always see through a periscope, not knowing what it really is.
Dead boughs and leaves crackle under our feet while we move with care. There is a zig-zag path in the wire entanglement right in front of us----
In a hollow in the terrain we discover a German corpse, or more precisely, a skeleton dressed in an infantryman's uniform, a rusty rifle at his side--that is the thing in question.
The body must have been there a long time----
THE POILU BOULEVARDIER. _December_, 1915.
Day has not yet come--the weather is misty, and the rain has stopped. From time to time a rifle shot----
They are working lively to set a wire entanglement between the line of craters and a support trench. It has got to be done fast because daybreak will soon be here. The men sense the completion of the task, and hurry to finish it. They joke and seem to forget they are at a place the worst on the whole front.
The quiet astonishes them; neither of them find it natural----
Suddenly a heavy explosion--a great trembling and a large spout of earth rises in the air a hundred yards from us----
At the same moment the well-known serenade--from all sides comes a rain of projectiles: minnenwerfer, shells and bullets. A man, wounded, cries like an infant with its throat cut----
Expecting an attack, I shout to my _poilus_:
Corporal Poulet replied with an inexplicable accent:
"That's all right; as long as your eyeglass is not broken, everything will go well!"
A POILU WEEPS, CALONNE TRENCH. _December_, 1915.
From the German lines as well as our own, white smoke curls up from wood fires.
The hour at which the sector becomes active has not arrived, and I have plenty of time to make the rounds of the first line to keep warm.