ENCOURAGEMENT. PERSEVERANCE. ARDOR. RESOLUTION. GREATNESS. ENERGY. SUBLIMITY.
Champagne and liquor have their effect--now the music commences!
First the "Marseillaise" rings out. Could the boches have heard us from the bottom of their pits they would realize we were all ready to conquer or to die.
Then each one sings his little _chanson_--these pretty French songs full of verve and spirit. How odd it is to hear sung "The Marriage of Mademoiselle Fallières," here in this dugout, mute witness to so much drama----
The hour to separate has come. Each must take up his duties, save those who return to the rear.
It is midnight--and it is clear and calm.
I leave with Captain Gunther to go into the first line. It is well that our _poilus_ see that we are at their side--are they not our brothers? We wish as well to know what the boches are doing!
We enter a mine gallery where the work goes on actively. Our sappers are digging fast for the enemy is working feverishly also. It is he who explodes it first--as usual!
"They are ahead of us--they're digging their hole," said one of Grenet's men.
On the menaced part of the front the number of men has been lessened, save only in the little posts, where they wait events stoically.
Coming outside, a _poilu_, with an undefinable accent, says:
"Then they're going to spring it to-night?"
"Well, there's no need in hiding it--I'm not blind and I know what it means to go back there--On a night like this it wouldn't bother me a bit to be shot like an arrow up to the stars!"
Our rounds are finished. We can go back to our dugout and profit by the hours of quiet to get much needed rest.
In going into Sap 13 again, I look up at the heavens. My brain is so tired that I seem to see a cortège of soldiers. Are they the Old Guard and our _poilus_, our brave _poilus_? Yes, decidedly, the Old Guard is feasting up there, the Old Guard of Austerlitz----
The earth, in this clear and luminous night, appears in bold relief and one sees between the torn tree trunks, arms reaching out of the ground, arms lifted to the German heaven, and our own dead fallen on this cursed soil of the Eparges--they seem to contemplate the great fête up there----
What horrible weather! It is raining in torrents. Everything is soaked. Again we shall have to flounder about in mud up to the middle.