The cry echoes on all sides.
Although I had begun to convince myself of the reality of events, the excitement of departure and the irritation caused by knowing nothing definite had set my nerves jangling and prevented me from realizing to the full the approaching horror.
We had harnessed our horses and formed the gun-teams.
A gun in a 75 mm. battery is composed of the gun itself and ammunition wagon, each with its limber, and each drawn by six horses harnessed in pairs. The detachment consists of six drivers, six gunners, a corporal, and a sergeant, who is the gun-commander. But my gun, the first of the 2nd battery, is also accompanied by the section-commander, the battery-leader, a trumpeter, and the Captain's orderly with his two horses. In all, eighteen men and nineteen horses. Of the eighteen men, seventeen are serving their time. For nearly a year now they have led the same life; each day they have executed the same manœuvres together. One detachment, therefore, is a real entity, and forms a little society by itself, with its habits, likes and dislikes.
Bréjard, the section-commander, really commands it himself, as he did before the general mobilization. So nothing seems changed. Hubert, the new gun-commander, a reservist, has his thoughts centred on his young wife, whom, after only a few months of married life, he has had to leave at his farm, where the corn is still standing.
Bréjard, who must be about twenty-four, is tall and spare, with unfathomable grey eyes, an obstinate chin, and rather strong features. He enlisted when very young, and, by dint of hard and methodical work, passed into Fontainebleau high up in the list.
Corporal Jean Déprez affords a contrast to Bréjard. Dreamy and imaginative, bored by regimental life, and far from reconciled to the prospect of many months of war, Déprez, as far as the Service is concerned, is a weakling to whom any exercise of his authority, small though it is, goes against the grain. He has momentary flashes of wit, and, although as a rule very unenthusiastic and rather moody, he is nevertheless an amusing conversationalist at times, and is a staunch friend. The lack of work in the barracks has for some part thrown us together, and both were pleased to find ourselves side by side when the moment came to take the field.
With Corporal Déprez on one hand, and Gun-layer Hutin on the other, I had not the least feeling of loneliness in the tremendous excitement of mobilization, and the hourly expectation of the breaking of the storm.