Almost at my feet is a knapsack, ripped open and revealing a card of small china buttons, a new red handkerchief, a gray-striped flannel shirt, a pencil and a sheaf of writing paper.  Rummaging in the main compartment I find, folded at the back, a book recording the name and record of military service of one Gaston Michel Miseroux, whose home is at Amiens, and who is—­or was—­a private in the Tenth Battalion of the ——­ Regiment of Chasseurs a Pied.  Whether this Gaston Michel Miseroux got away alive without his knapsack, or whether he was captured or was killed, there is none to say.  His service record is here in the trampled dust and he is gone.

Before going farther the young lieutenant, speaking in his broken English, told us the story of the fight, which had been fought, he said, just forty-eight hours before.  “The French,” he said, “must have been here for several days.  They had fortified this hill, as you see; digging intrenchments in front for their riflemen and putting their artillery behind at a place I shall presently show you.  Also they had placed many of their sharpshooters in the houses.  It was a strong position, commanding the passage of the river, and they should have been able to hold it against twice their number.

“Our men came, as you did, along that road off yonder; and then our infantry advanced across the fields under cover of our artillery fire.  We were in the open and the French were above us here and behind shelter; and so we lost many men.

“They had mined the bridge over the canal and also the last remaining bridge across the river; but we came so fast that we took both bridges before they could set off the mines.

“In twenty minutes we held the town and the last of their sharpshooters in the houses had been dislodged or killed.  Then, while our guns moved over there to the left and shelled them on the flank, two companies of Germans—­five hundred men—­charged up the steep road over which you have just climbed and took this trench here in five minutes of close fighting.

“The enemy lost many men here before they ran.  So did we lose many.  On that spot there”—­he pointed to a little gap in the hedge, not twenty feet away, where the grass was pressed flat—­“I saw three dead men lying in a heap.

“We pushed the French back, taking a few prisoners as we went, until on the other side of this hill our artillery began to rake them, and then they gave way altogether and retreated to the south, taking their guns.  Remember, they outnumbered us and they had the advantage of position; but we whipped them—­we Germans—­as we always do whip our enemies.”

His voice changed from boasting to pity: 

“Ach, but it was shameful that they should have been sent against us wearing those long blue coats, those red trousers, those shiny black belts and bright brass buttons!  At a mile, or even half a mile, the Germans in their dark-gray uniforms, with dull facings, fade into the background; but a Frenchman in his foolish monkey clothes is a target for as far as you can see him.