Tuesday, September 22
We passed the night on some straw in the outbuildings.
My wrist is now healed, and I am going to return to my post with the first gun.
Under the morning sun the pond shone like a silver mirror, and the little Venetian bridge struck a bright note among the dark tones of the trees, while the water flowing underneath, over the slime and rotten leaves, was jet-black. The château stood out starkly against the pale blue sky, and the yellow gravel of the walks and the vermilion sage afforded a bright contrast to the uniform green of the lawns.
The battery moved on. The crackling of rifle and machine-gun fire accompanied the roar of the artillery. The enemy was evidently making a stand against our enveloping movement, which it was doubtless the intention of the French commanders to accentuate. We resumed our march towards the north, heading for Roye. The success of the manœuvre depended on numbers, and I wondered whether we had sufficient men available.
In a field by the wayside some Senegalese Tirailleurs, fine-looking, ebony-coloured men dressed in navy blue uniforms, were making coffee with the simple gestures and admirable attitudes of people untrammelled by civilization.
The officers had gone off to reconnoitre. We halted at the foot of a long slope in the middle of some large mangel-wurzel fields forming a kind of basin near the village of Fresnières, where heavy shells were falling.
The line of fire, forming an angle towards Compiègne, stretched from north to south. We could not be more than a mile or two, as the crow flies, from the plains we had been occupying during the past few days on the banks of the Aisne, near Tracy-le-Mont.
I do not know what echo or confusion of sound prevented us from locating the position of the battle exactly. Fighting was going on in the direction of Ribécourt and Lassigny, but the heavy battery which had been bombarding Fresnières was now silent. Behind the woods columns of black smoke were curling upwards. Fires or shells bursting? It was impossible to tell.