ing pace was set. Many carriages whose exhausted horses could not stand the strain fell far in the rear. The batteries were mixed up in a hopeless scramble. That was a small matter. No one cared to be bothered with such trifles. Carriages unable to make a grade were sometimes helped but more often left to their own wild devices. The mangy horses unable longer to lift their feet, stumbled and fell and on finding themselves unable to get up again, were shot and rolled into the ditch.

Untold ages wore away and, finally, at two o'clock the head of the column halted. The blackness of the drizzling night made it impossible to see any help in the surrounding country, but the order came to unharness and unhitch. Carriages were left in the road where they found themselves and harness was thrown desperately into the mud or into the ditch by the side of the road which had assumed long ago the proportions of a river.

Neither officers nor men knew where they were. Men, made stolid by irritation, led horses around among barracks that loomed up in the darkness, shouting to know where the watering trough was and where our respective stables were. Vicious, hungry, drowned horses fell with their leaders into ditches and bumped into fences until at last they were packed into stables and fed. Ourselves we fed on a slice of cold bacon and a quarter of a cup of cold, black coffee after waiting in line till we could hardly stand. Then out again into the pelting rain in search of a barrack for sleep. Oh! unfortunate man that was

CONTENTS
INDEX

Toul Sector

CONTENTS
INDEX