Through the night rolls on the convoy. Our old Captain of the 27th draws off his iron-plated boots and displays his socks, brilliantly yellow and quite new. We stretch ourselves, we groan, we snore. A pointsman, busy with his levers, cries out to us to ask whither we are bound:
"Troyes? What a joke! You are on your way to Verdun!…"
To believe everything one is told is the first illusion.
O sullen silence of night travelling! Our faces grow dull and lifeless in the indistinct light which filters doubtfully through the blue shade. From time to time, perched high up on the embankment, we flash past vague figures silhouetted against the darkened heavens; they are sentries guarding the line. Suddenly long white pencils of light evolve majestically out of the night's blackness, chasing away the shadows.
Walls and station lamps announce Verdun. For a further three or four miles we run on. At one o'clock in the morning we find ourselves at Charny. Amid much confusion the sections fall in opposite the doors of the wagons, from which a heavy mist now slowly drifts. And heavy-footed and slowly we set out on the march.
Wednesday, August 26th.
At daybreak we pass through Bras. Before the country cottages are huge piles of manure from which a light steam rises. Cocks are a-crow; but man is still sleeping. We march and still march. Little by little, I become conscious that a rather fevered curiosity is spreading through the ranks.
We overtake a regiment of field artillery, drawn out in an interminable file, resting by the wayside. Gunners and drivers are alike asleep, overcome by fatigue, the former sprawled on the gun carriages, mouths wide open; the latter with their noses buried in the manes of their horses. They too sleep, poor beasts, with muzzles drooping and knees bent.
We pass by, the heavy, nailed boots of the men echoing loudly on the roadway. But the artillerymen do not hear us; they sleep too soundly for that. We even find it necessary to prod the horses before they will move aside to let us pass.
Crossing the Meuse, we encountered immense herds of cattle. They were divided into hundreds corralled at the water's edge in a smooth meadow. The brutes were lying on the brown earth, with their muzzles upraised in an ever-changing chorus of lowing. Cattlemen in red trousers kept placid watch over them.