The company occupies a new sector in the front line. No dug-outs here, the ground is too hard to do anything. We take sentry duty in the middle of the beetroots, in a sort of trough dug in the ground, twenty yards in front of the trench. It is snowing.
Thursday, 19th November.
At dawn hoar-frost covers the whole field. A little beyond the barbed wire are three small mounds, covered with snow: the bodies of those of the 24th who died. It is freezing hard, so we stamp our feet on the ground. Red faces emerge from passe-montagnes. I carefully press my nose between my woollen-gloved fingers; the sensation of feeling the warmth come gently back is delicious. A few cannon shots from time to time, as though to explain our presence here.
The day is spent in walking as quickly as possible between the two frozen walls of the trench. When I cross Reymond, each of us, before turning round, gravely salutes the other and says: "Buon di! Buon di!" like the grotesque doctors in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.
The company, returning to the grotto to sleep, brings back the bodies of eight men, killed on the 12th and picked up between the lines, thanks to the heroism of an auxiliary doctor named Wallon.
Yesterday I received a sleeping-bag made of a kind of soft oil-cloth, lined with flannel: a notable event in a soldier's life. This evening, wrapped in my cover, I enter my sleeping-bag and pull down the edges over my head.
Friday, 20th November.
The trees are now entirely stripped of leaves. The country looks cold and dismal.
The eight bodies are laid out in a line in front of the grotto: the second time we have had such a sight before our eyes. This one is Mallet, who was on guard with us in the train which brought us to the depot. He was a little stout fellow, quiet and taciturn, with a brown beard. War was not at all his vocation, and he would frequently remark with a sigh: "I am certain I shall be killed."
Ill-omened words which should never be spoken.