Boom! comes the Boche’s reply.
A great mass of earth, grass and crumbled stones shoots up a hundred yards ahead of us!
Too short!
Boom! still another. Still short!
A large shell heads for us. It thunders. Where is it going to burst? The devil! It falls near our first section, to the left; then, almost at once, another, a little to the right. Are we spotted? We haven’t fired a cartridge yet, and there isn’t an aeroplane or sausage in the air.
Two “150’s,” one right after the other, burst fair on the section, right in the hole. An enormous mass of earth spurts up. Through the dust and smoke we see broken arms, sandbags ripped open, legs torn from the body, an entire body, the gun!...
The lieutenant knits his brows in dismay. A sergeant from the reserve half section, slightly pale, runs up with the details.
“Sergeant Rollé, the gun layer, and the crew are killed.”
“Occupy the emplacement with your half-section.”