IN LORRAINE
Sunday, 23rd August.
This morning we started in the direction of Belfort. About midnight the whole of Humes was peacefully sleeping when the bugler sounded a prolonged call, repeated all over the village. In a twinkling we join our squads. It appears that the regiment at the front urgently needs reinforcements of five hundred men.
The complement—no longer contingent—has mustered in the dark. After the roll-call we are summoned to the office for the last time. Distribution of rations and small loaves.
At six o'clock the five hundred are ready to start. Our chief is a lieutenant of the reserve—a schoolmaster in civil life. Each man has picked a few flowers on the roadside to fasten a bunch to his rifle. The whole depot is present. Verrier and Reymond give me a vigorous handshake. Really the whole scene moves me, though for nothing in the world would I have it appear so.
"Look out, there! Number! Form fours! Right wheel! Forward!"
The column begins to move, and we thunder forth the Marseillaise with the utmost enthusiasm. I turn round to wave a last farewell to my friends.
They return the gesture and shout, "Au revoir!"
At Langres station we enter the train, which rumbles off in an easterly direction. I again have the luck to find myself in a second-class carriage. The same atmosphere and gaiety as when we left Paris for the depot. Almost all my companions have gone before their turn. They are convinced they will come back and see the end of the business. And they wish to be in at the victory. The heat is terrible.
Perspiration trickles down faces already bronzed by a fortnight in the open air. There are ten in the compartment; all the same, at nightfall, we manage to drop off to sleep.