“I can tell you it was pretty trying to the nerves, but my Zouaves were very steady in spite of fairly heavy losses.”

“In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and some of our artillery were posted hereabouts.  Presently a German aeroplane came overhead circling round in reconnaissance.  But it was out for more than that.  Suddenly it began to drop bombs, and whether by design or otherwise—­they have no manners, these fellows—­they exploded in the middle of a field hospital.  One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a bullet from one of these bombs, though I don’t know what other casualties there were.  But the inevitable happened.  Shortly after the disappearance of the aeroplane the German shells searched the position, and found it with unpleasant accuracy.  It is always the same.  The German aeroplanes are really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns.  We always know that within half an hour of a-n observation by aeroplane the shells will begin to fall above the gunners unless they have altered their position.  It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

“For some days this rat-hunting among the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy.  The truth was that we had no water for ourselves, and were four days thirsty.  It was really terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some of us were almost mad with thirst.  Our tongues were blistered and swollen, our eyes had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had horrid dreams.  It was, I assure you, an intolerable agony.”

“But we did our best for the horses.  I have said we were four days without drink.  That was because we used our last water for the poor beasts.  A gentleman has to do that—­you will agree?—­and the French soldier is not a barbarian.  Even then the horses had to go without a drop of water for two days, and I’m not ashamed to say that I wept salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor innocent creatures, who did not understand the meaning of all this bloody business and who wondered at our cruelty.”

“The nights were dreadful.  All around us were burning villages, the dear hamlets of France, and at every faint puff of wind the sparks floated about them like falling stars.  But other fires were burning.  Under the cover of the darkness the Germans had collected their dead and had piled them into great heaps and had covered them with straw and paraffin.  Then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres.”

“Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed.  Not many of them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living, with hungry beaks.  One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him to die.  That is war!”