“I have said we were four days without drink, and that was because we used our last water for our horses.  A gentleman has to do that, you will agree, and a 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 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, and at every faint puff of wind sparks floated about them like falling stars.

“But other fires were burning.  Under the cover of darkness the Germans had piled the dead 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.  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.

“The German shells were terrifying.  I confess to you that there were times when my nerves were absolutely gone.  I crouched down with my men (we were in open formation) and ducked my head at the sound of the bursting shell, and I trembled in every limb as though I had a fit of ague.

“It is true that in reality the German shells are not very effective.  Only about one in four explodes nicely, but it is a bad thing when, as happened to me, the shells plopped around in a diameter of fifty meters.  One hears the zip-zip of bullets, the boom of the great guns, the ste-tang of our French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of noise and stench, the screams at times of dying horses and men joined with the fury of gunfire and rising shrill above it, no man may boast of his courage.  There were moments when I was a coward with all of them.

“But one gets used to it, as to all things.  My ague did not last long.  Soon I was shouting and cheering.  Again we cleared the enemy out of the village of Bregy, and that was where I fell, wounded in the arm pretty badly by a bit of shell.  When I came to myself a brother officer told me things were going on well and that we had rolled back the German right.  That was better than bandages to me.  I felt very well again, in spite of my weakness.

“It is the beginning of the end, and the Germans are on the run.  They are exhausted and demoralized.  Their pride has been broken; they are short of ammunition; they know their plans have failed.

“Now that we have them on the move nothing will save them.  This war is going to be finished quicker than people thought.  I believe that in a few days the enemy will be broken and that we shall have nothing more to do than kill them as they fight back in retreat.”

That is the story, without any retouching of my pen, of a young Lieutenant of Zouaves whom I met after the battle of Meaux, with blood still splashed upon his uniform.