TONIGHT I am on guard. I have just taken a walk around the cars. It is the hour before the dawn, and the cold, grey mist hangs over all, robing the jagged ruins and harmonizing the rough outlines into something more human, while accentuating the stare of the vacant window-openings. There is the first crescent of the moon in the sky. Two companies of artillery have just passed along the road. The guns and caissons creak and rumble, and the men, preserving a sleepy silence, bend forward on their horses, their heavy sabres smacking against the horses’ sides, and their blue uniforms melting into the mist.
The officer halts to water his horse, and we chat for a minute. The contre-avions are after a raider headed for Bar-le-Duc, and I put out my lantern. We smile as the shrapnel bursts more than a mile from the machine. The officer speaks a few words of praise about his men, then vaults on his horse. We exchange “bonne chance” and he canters off down the road, disappearing in the blue-grey mist.
A RUMOR creeps into camp that the next attack will be at V——. More rumors follow, supported by the increased traffic. We are on the main road to V——, and are keenly critical. We take out our maps and examine the outline of the front in the sector just as if we knew something about it. Would-be strategists hold forth in heated arguments, and many bitter debates follow. Those of us who have the early watch just at daybreak notice many companies of soixante-quinzes rumbling by each morning, and observe that they take the left fork of the road. This is important, for the left road leads towards M——, which is really not in our sector. More argument follows, and ears are constantly strained to catch the first augmentation of the distant thunder of the guns, and to determine from which end of the sector it comes.
Now all the officers admit that an attack is to ensue shortly, but they do not know when. We tune up our cars and get our baggage ready, as we may be called. The lieutenant receives some orders and warns us to be ready to move on a moment’s notice.
The traffic is incessant now. Camions with shells, barbed wire, camouflage cloth, torpilles, and more shells rush by. Convoys pass filled with troops, cheering wildly, thirty-five hundred or more in an evening. The thunder is gradually intensified, and the sky flashes faintly in the distance like heat lightning. From a hilltop artillery rockets and star-shells can be seen in the far horizon. More troops keep going up, and the guns pound the line with unabated fury.
It is evening, and we are formed in a circle listening to some story. The lieutenant walks up to us:
“We move at seven in the morning,” he says laconically, and steps off.