The realisation that we were witnessing a rout did however penetrate my consciousness at last, though still only in a vague way. Vaguely too I dreaded lest our energy should suffer by it.
I was delighted when we got orders, about six o'clock, to leave the high road. We went across country for not more than four or five hundred yards.
Some trenches dug there appeared before us, as if by chance.
A French dirigible, the Fleurus, passed high above our heads, and seemed, I do not quite know why, a happy omen.
SPINCOURT
Heaven knows whether we expected to have to charge from the beginning to the end of that interminable day. The captain and the subaltern had warned us. The cannonade raged in front of us and all round us. The German fire was concentrated against a village below us, on our right. If we were occupying it, what losses it would mean to us! To begin with we could see each explosion and the resultant crumbling of the buildings. Towards midday a thick pall of smoke rose and shrouded everything.