The troops skirmished towards the fortifications, and, behind them, the engineers and coolies, with the aid of axe and saw, cleared a broad track through the forest. Dynamite was used to level the big trees, giants of the jungle, in dealing with which ordinary methods would have been too long and laborious. Towards evening a position was reached, about 200 yards from the ramparts, whence a good view of the defences could be obtained, and offering to a mountain battery a fair chance of effecting a breach. The column from Nha-Nam made slow but steady progress during the day, and succeeded in driving the enemy from several forts and entrenchments.
The force from Thaï-Nguyen also effected a cautious and successful advance, shelling and capturing trench after trench. Just before sunset we could hear their little mountain-guns hammering away at the retreating army. Before night fell a message was flashed from this column stating that it had reached a point on the road leading to our position, about 8 miles distant.
During the day the losses on our side had been small compared with the progress made; and since the commencement of the operations the total casualties of the expedition amounted to ten killed and thirty-two wounded. It was certain that the enemy had suffered severely, for more than forty of their dead had been found in and around the different positions captured.
My section had been on camp-guard duty all day, much to the disgust of all of us, and, to pass away the time when not on sentry-go, I climbed up the hill and watched events. From this position the sight was a grand one, for, as I have said, a panorama of the whole region could be obtained.
Crossing the brush-covered plain, going to and fro between the forest—that hid the enemy and our attacking force—and our camp situated at the base of the hill on which I stood, was a constant stream of humanity. Now it was a gang of coolies, under charge of a sapper, going to relieve some of their comrades who were clearing a way for the guns: then a string of more of these useful but ragged and dirty auxiliaries, trotting along in couples with a long bamboo between them, on which were suspended boxes of rifle ammunition. From the forest came a little convoy of wounded, or dead—who could tell from here? For the naked eye could just distinguish three crumpled, reclining figures, each covered with a brown army blanket, lying on the stretchers which the ambulance men carried carefully over the obstacles in their path. One of the three groups formed by the stretchers and their bearers suddenly stopped, and the burden was gently lowered to the ground. I saw a man run off to the right, something at the end of a strap swinging from his right hand, and suddenly I realised that this balancing object was a water-bottle. A kindly artillery sergeant, whose gun, close to where I had been standing, had just vomited a shell, handed me his field-glasses with a smile, and with a salute I thanked him for having guessed my eager desire. When I had adjusted the glasses, the soldier was back by the stretcher, and kneeling beside it was supporting his wounded friend's head with one hand, while with the other he held to the poor fellow's lips the flask containing the precious liquid he had been craving for. Only those who have been wounded can form a true idea of the terrible thirst that seizes hold of a man who has been stricken down; water is like new life to him, for all his anatomy seems parched up, burning, and the friend who can procure it is an angel of mercy indeed. I recognised in the wounded man and his chum two privates from the 3rd Company of the Legion, despatched from Lang-son to assist in the operations. The "parrakeet brigade" we laughingly styled them, because their brave but somewhat eccentric captain had seen fit to dress them in green drill, which he declared made his men less visible at a distance than the conventional khaki. One of the men, the stricken one, was a Prussian; his comrade an Alsatian: hereditary enemies, if some political historians are to be believed, but here there was no room for race-hatred. There was no thought of it in the Legion, and surely no better demonstration could be given of the fact than the little incident I have described. Now the belated stretcher was moving on towards a big tent situated in a corner of the camp, from the top of which floated a red-cross flag. This was the field hospital, in which the head surgeon, M. de Camprieu, and his staff of doctors and orderlies were very busy; for besides the wounded there were numerous cases of fever and dysentery to be attended to.
With the glasses I tried to pierce the shadows of the forest, but the foliage was too thick, and the only indications of the struggle that was going on there under its vast roof of leaves, and between its serried tree-trunks, were the occasional puffs of smoke filtering through the verdure, the distant rat! tat! tat! of the rifles, punctuated now and again by a sharp crack of an exploding dynamite cartridge as it splintered the massive bole of a banyan or teak.
I handed back the glasses to the kindly "non-com," and watched the artillerymen working the guns. They were firing slowly now, one a minute. A captain, standing behind the centre of the line of long-necked, vicious-looking field-pieces, gave the command: "Première pièce ... feu!" "Bang!" howled the ugly war-dog as it skidded back a yard on its locked wheels, and from the distant forest came back the sharp crack of the bursting shell, easily distinguished from the other reports arising from the wood.
The rebels were not the only sufferers from the guns, for the continued detonations had driven from their usual haunts the herds of deer which frequented the region, and in consequence the tigers, missing their prey, were prowling about empty and enraged. At night their weird "cop! cop! cop!" occasional snarl, or gruesome roar would waken the stillness of the jungle, as they roamed around our camp; and on several occasions I experienced an uncomfortable icy feeling from the back of the neck downwards when these sounds approached me during my two hours of sentry-go in the dark. Our column lost two coolies and three commissariat bullocks, both men and cattle being carried away by these "striped devils," as the natives called them. A tirailleur sentry belonging to the Thaï-Nguyen force also fell a victim to their hunger.