CHAPTER XVIII
WITH ORDERS
“There he is, Captain,” shouted a non-commissioned intelligence officer.
“It is necessary,” said the captain, “to take this order to the lieutenant commanding your company at once. You’ll find that it’s only a promenade. Go ahead.”
A promenade!
From the Château de Cappy where the headquarters of our brigade were all one could see that morning on the horizon was smoke and flame.
The earth trembles as though there were some sort of a fanciful, continuous earthquake.
Since the attack began and our waves crossed the first Boche lines, the enemy’s artillery planted on the heights of Cléry, Mont St. Quentin, Barleux has sent over a formidable barrage to prevent all possibility of the arrival of reinforcements.
It hopes to cut off in the rear the forces engaged in the attack, to encircle them, to exterminate or capture them. A wall of shell and fire separates them from us. Three hundred yards in front of the heights of the La Vache woods from La Vierge clear to Dompierre and Fontaine-les-Cappy, it is one uninterrupted explosion of great shells which throw to great heights enormous masses of earth and stones almost as though they were gushing from the bowels of the earth.