Early in February we were called to Bar-le-Duc, a pleasant old city some distance behind Verdun.  Several hundred thousand men were soon going to be killed and wounded, and the city was in a feverish haste of preparation.  So many thousand cans of ether, so many thousand pounds of lint, so many million shells, so many ambulances, so many hundred thousand litres of gasoline.  Nobody knew when the Germans were going to strike.

During the winter great activity in the German trenches near Verdun had led the French to expect an attack, but it was not till the end of January that aeroplane reconnoitering made certain the imminence of an offensive.  As a first step in countering it, the French authorities prepared in the villages surrounding Bar-le-Duc a number of depots for troops, army supplies, and ammunition.  Of this organization, Bar-le-Duc was the key.  The preparations for the counter-attack were there centralized.  Day after day convoys of motor-lorries carrying troops ground into town and disappeared to the eastward; big mortars mounted on trucks came rattling over the pavements to go no one knew where; and khaki-clad troops, troupes d’attaque, tanned Marocains and chunky, bull-necked Zouaves, crossed the bridge over the Ornain and marched away.  At the turn in the road a new transparency had been erected, with Verdun printed on it in huge letters.  Now and then a soldier, catching sight of it, would nudge his comrade.

On the 18th we were told to be in readiness to go at any minute and permissions to leave the barrack yard were recalled.

The attack began with an air raid on Bar-le-Duc.  I was working on my engine in the sunlit barrack yard when I heard a muffled Pom! somewhere to the right.  Two French drivers who were putting a tire on their car jumped up with a “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ca?” We stood together looking round.  Beyond a wall on the other side of the river great volumes of brownish smoke were rolling up, and high in the air, brown and silvery, like great locusts, were two German aeroplanes.

“Nom d’un chien, il y’en a plusieurs,” said one of the Frenchmen, pointing out four, five, seven, nine aeroplanes.  One seemed to hang immobile over the barrack yard.  I fancy we all had visions of what would happen if a bomb hit the near-by gasoline reserve.  Men ran across the yard to the shelter of the dormitories; some, caught as we were in the open, preferred to take a chance on dropping flat under a car.  A whistling scream, a kind of shrill, increasing shriek, sounded in the air and ended in a crash.  Smoke rolled up heavily in another direction.  Another whistle, another crash, another and another and another.  The last building struck shot up great tongues of flame.  “C’est la gare,” said somebody.  Across the yard a comrade’s arm beckoned me, “Come on, we’ve got to help put out the fires!”