When the smoke lifts from the overturned ground, all we can see are corpses scattered about. Our comrades ... our dead!
The enemy wanted to prevent our companies capturing and organizing it.
We try to see something from the shell hole where we remain. It is certain death even to try to raise the head. The bullets glance off the ground.
Morin wants to join the lieutenant and finish his errand in spite of everything, but where is he? Was he in the blockhouse? We can’t see anyone in front of us.
Our waves of infantry have turned to the right, invested Herbècourt, and taken it. They are now fighting in the village. We judge from the columns of smoke that there are fires. The noise of the explosion of grenades reaches us.
But in front of us there is no one. It is a breach. The breach our company ought to have held firmly closed with its machine guns during the attack on the village.
The enemy knows this without a doubt. He has calculated his blow well. He has succeeded. He is going to launch out from the clump of trees and take our companies in the rear.
Indeed that is the case. Groups of gray worms crawl out of the thicket. They reach the ridge. They are a hundred yards from us. There is no one to stop them. But where are our two sections? Are they wiped out too?
“My old Morin, we’re done for.”