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.
He spoke with calm and indifference.
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?"
"Who told you that story?"
"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——