In front of me, about 600 yards off, and under cover of the brow of a hill carpeted with russet stubble, I saw two batteries of artillery, firing their guns.  I looked intently.  The pieces were in perfect line and the gunners at their posts.  The shots were fired at regular intervals and with cool deliberation.  The gunners took their time, and seemed to be working very casually.  I had expected to see them fairly excited:  the men running under a hail of shells, teams brought up at a gallop as soon as a few salvoes had been fired, and the guns whirled off at full speed and lined up in battery again some hundreds of yards further off.

On the contrary, these guns seemed to be planted there for good.  The limbers, which were massed to the rear under cover of a slope, looked very much like the sections of munitions I had seen just before.  The men were sleeping in the shadows of their horses, and the horses were asleep on their feet in their appointed places.  The only man standing was a stout-looking adjutant who was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets.  With his eyes on the ground he seemed to be counting his steps.  And meanwhile, the two batteries went on firing salvoes of four at a time.  When one was finished there was a pause of two or three minutes.  Then the other battery took it up.

But Wattrelot interrupted my reverie:  “Look over there, sir.... Ca barde!” I looked in the direction he was pointing out.  And now I no longer felt the uneasy feeling that had come over me at the sight of what was going on here.  Above a height that overtopped the hill on which I was, and about 1,500 yards away, the German shells were bursting incessantly.  We could distinctly hear the sharp sound of the explosions.  In the clear blue of the sky they made little white puffs which vanished gradually and were replaced by others.  Their gunners could not have been firing with the same coolness as ours, for the white puffs increased in number.  The noise they were making on the spot must have been deafening.  From where I was we heard the explosions following one upon another without intermission.

But what was most thrilling was to watch one of our own batteries in action under this avalanche of projectiles.  The slope on which it was placed was in shadow still.  Against this blue-grey background short flames could be seen flashing for a second at the muzzles of the guns.  And the four reports reached us almost at the same moment.  The gunners could be seen just as calm under fire as the others here.  The German shells, that tried to scatter death among them, burst too high.  They were trying to annihilate this battery, which was no doubt causing terrible ravages among their men.  But the broken fragments fell wide, and our gunners worked their pieces gallantly.  This was something that more than made up for my touch of disappointment at first.  My hope revived, and I started off at a trot straight in front of me, getting past the ridge, under cover of which the pair of batteries were plying their guns.