"Come along; it's your turn to keep watch over there among the beetroots."
There is a smile on the lieutenant's face as he adds in grumbling accents—
"I never heard any one snore as you do!"
I take up my post, lying flat on the ground, at a distance of fifty yards in front of the trench. I do all I can think of to keep awake. There is a dense mist over the land. After a couple of hours I am relieved. It is raining, of course!
The daybreak is dull and unpleasant. Are we to attack again? No. Yesterday we only had to create a diversion, so the lieutenant explains, and compel the Germans to direct their fire upon our sector. This artillery fire has been sprinkling the plain ever since eight o'clock. The shells shriek overhead and burst away to our left. We remark, jokingly—
"That's nothing; the 21st will catch it all."
During the night a section of the 23rd company, remaining in reserve, has linked up our trench, by means of a branch, with the rear trenches. We are delighted at the idea that we shall no longer have to crawl over exposed country.
The day seems as though it would never end, and nothing happens. Reymond and I, tired out, and seated side by side in a sort of sofa hollowed out in the trench wall, feel not the slightest inclination even to speak. At night the 23rd replaces us and the 24th retires to the grotto.
On reaching it, after forty minutes in the branches, the grotto seems more than ever a paradise to us all.