"Come, come, if you will drill well for five minutes I will march you back to quarters."
It is the greatest mistake in the world to drill without putting one's heart into it. As Belin emphatically says—
"Troops that cannot do manual exercises are no better than a flock of sheep."
And the rascal is right, too, as he always is.
Friday, 4th December.
At night the company musters to mount to the trenches. On the right, for a few hundred yards, we proceed along the side of the wood, whilst to the left stretches an endless field of beetroots, in the midst of which the Germans are entrenched. In this field has been dug the branch leading to the first line. It is completely dark, and the ground is quite soft; the twenty-five minutes' crossing of this branch is a most disagreeable piece of work. We knock against all sorts of corners, slip about, and fall against the slimy walls.
Passages open out from time to time; these are second-line trenches, or else branches connecting together the various sectors. Moreover, first- and second-line trenches resemble the branches, though somewhat wider and provided with earthen parapets in the direction of the enemy.
We are all on duty until nine o'clock. The Germans fire their rifles to inform us that they are there. We blaze away in their direction for the same reason.
About ten everything is calm. It is raining. Earth and sky seem blended in one general flood.
Varlet, with his hood, looks like a dwarf out of some book of fairy tales; Jacquard wears a knitted helmet, out of which emerges a fan-shaped beard; he covers his shoulders with an oil-cloth stole. He looks like a chorister masquerading as a crusader. Reymond, draped in a huge khaki poncho, might have been a member of the Holy League.