“As it grew lighter they did not dare move away, and none of us could get out alive or over the bank to use the bayonet.  A few men made holes in the looser earth, and so we fired at each other through the bank here and there.  Our guns could not help us, and theirs could not shoot across, for we were all together, and yet we could not get at each other.  Some of the men—­theirs and ours—­got over lower down, so there was firing now and then, and two men were killed near me sliding down into the water in the trenches.

“Somebody threw a cartridge case across close to me.  On a paper inside was scrawled one word:  ‘Surrender!’ We did not know if they wanted to surrender themselves or wanted us to surrender.  They were more numerous, but we were better placed, so we went on scrapping and crawling around to get a shot at them.

“Perhaps it was the French who got round at the ends.  There was heavy firing.  We heard quite close through the raised bank a few slipping down on the river edge and water splashing.  Some of us pulled ourselves up on to the bank.  I heard our men scrambling up on either side of me, but could not see them.  I think I was too sleepy.  I shouted to charge, and then must have fallen over on my head, rolling down the bank.

“I am on the way down with these wounded.  There are fifteen of us unhit here, but I think we came away just now with nearly a hundred out of our 600 of yesterday.”

He was doing gallant Captain’s work, a young, slight, ordinary Belgian trooper, a volunteer private in the ranks, muddy, limping, and unspeakably tired in muscle and nerve.  His story is as nearly as possible in his own words, interrupted by blanks in his own consciousness of events—­lapses familiar to men whose muscles and nerves are exhausted, but who must still work on without sleep.

For the following ten hours, without pause, he acted as interpreter and most capable adviser in getting long trains of stretchers with his wounded Belgian compatriots down and on to the British hospital ships.

A Visit to the Firing Line in France

[By a Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

PARIS, Sept. 30.—­In company with several representatives of American newspapers, I was permitted to pass several days in “the zone of military activity,” on credentials obtained at the personal request of Ambassador Herrick, that we might describe the destruction caused by the Germans in unfortified towns.  Although I have given a parole to say nothing concerning the movement of the troops or to mention certain points that I visited, I am now permitted to send a report of a part of my experiences.

We crossed the entire battlefield of the Marne, passed directly behind the lines of the battle still raging on the Aisne, accidentally getting under fire for an entire afternoon, and lunching in a hotel to the orchestra of bursting shells, one end of the building being blown away during the bombardment.  We witnessed a battle between an armored French monoplane and a German battery, and also had the experience of being accused of being German spies by two men wearing the English uniform, who, on failing to account for their own German accent, were speedily taken away under guard with their “numbers up,” as the French Commandant expressed what awaited them.