MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS.
April 17, 1917.
What bad luck!
Every time an attack is planned it must rain. One must paddle along in the mud—and then the water runs down your neck——
As we will start before daybreak over the top, one, naturally, will stumble—we collect all kinds of sticks so that we may scrape the mud from our sleeves——
I find myself leaping over the first German lines—then, the wide open space before reaching the second position.
Our artillery has done good work, the wire entanglements are fortunately destroyed.
We leap over more trenches and boyaux—From time to time our glance is arrested by German corpses around which occasionally some of our own have fallen——
Bullets sing in every direction—machine-gun nests we have passed sputter at us from behind.