_15th August._—We bivouac near the village of Authée, with the convoys of the 61st and 5th Chasseurs. It is dark and cold, and this night has tired me more than my longest marches. The waiting about unnerves us, and my blood boils when I think that the 22nd must be on the eve of having a fight. The Germans lay siege to Dinant eight kilomètres off. One hears the guns as if they were alongside. Our turn is near, I think. No one is affected thereby, and we prepare our soup to the whistling of shells. The cannonade seems to redouble, they are giving and taking hard knocks, and some there will be who won’t answer their names to-night.
_Ten o’clock._—The different convoys move off. 16th, 22nd, 9th, 28th, 32nd Dragoons, etc. All at once we are stupefied by seeing a battalion of the 33rd of the line, or rather what remains of the battalion, some thirty terrifying beings, livid, stumbling along, with horrible wounds. One has his lips carried away, an officer has a crushed hand, another has his arm fractured by a shell splinter. Their uniforms are torn, white with dust and drip with blood. Amongst the last comers the wounds are more villainous; in the waggons one sees bare legs that hang limp, bloodless faces. They come from Dinant, where the French have fought like lions. Our artillery arrived too late, but they had the fine courage to charge the German guns with the bayonet. The guns spit shell without cease and the crackle of musketry does not stop. We go across country to billet at Florennes. These last days of tropical heat give place to damp cold. It is raining. We meet long convoys of inhabitants who, panic-stricken, quit their houses to go and camp anywhere at all. It is lamentable. Two kilomètres from Florennes we “incline.” The cold is biting, in spite of the cloak I wear. We arrive in black darkness at a village where we bivouac in spite of the torrential rain. I rejoin the regiment with infinite trouble; clothes, kit, horses are dripping wet. They must stay so all night. I do a stable guard at three in the morning without a lantern. The horses are tied up by groups to a horseshoe. They kick and rear, upsetting the kit and the lances in the mud; I dabble about and lose myself in the night. The village is called Biesmérée.