Our jaws are set and we swallow our thoughts, hurrying, bustling, colliding, and grumbling without words.

A command goes forth—­“Shoulder your packs.”—­“There’s a counter-command—­” shouts an officer who runs down the trench with great strides, working his elbows, and the rest of his sentence disappears with him.  A counter-command!  A visible tremor has run through the files, a start which uplifts our heads and holds us all in extreme expectation.

But no; the counter-order only concerns the knapsacks.  No pack; but the blanket rolled round the body, and the trenching-tool at the waist.  We unbuckle our blankets, tear them open and roll them up.  Still no word is spoken; each has a steadfast eye and the mouth forcefully shut.  The corporals and sergeants go here and there, feverishly spurring the silent haste in which the men are bowed:  “Now then, hurry up!  Come, come, what the hell are you doing?  Will you hurry, yes or no?”

A detachment of soldiers with a badge of crossed axes on their sleeves clear themselves a fairway and swiftly delve holes in the wall of the trench.  We watch them sideways as we don our equipment.

“What are they doing, those chaps?”—­“It’s to climb up by.”

We are ready.  The men marshal themselves, still silently, their blankets crosswise, the helmet-strap on the chin, leaning on their rifles.  I look at their pale, contracted, and reflective faces.  They are not soldiers, they are men.  They are not adventurers, or warriors, or made for human slaughter, neither butchers nor cattle.  They are laborers and artisans whom one recognizes in their uniforms.  They are civilians uprooted, and they are ready.  They await the signal for death or murder; but you may see, looking at their faces between the vertical gleams of their bayonets, that they are simply men.

Each one knows that he is going to take his head, his chest, his belly, his whole body, and all naked, up to the rifles pointed forward, to the shells, to the bombs piled and ready, and above all to the methodical and almost infallible machine-guns—­to all that is waiting for him yonder and is now so frightfully silent—­before he reaches the other soldiers that he must kill.  They are not careless of their lives, like brigands, nor blinded by passion like savages.  In spite of the doctrines with which they have been cultivated they are not inflamed.  They are above instinctive excesses.  They are not drunk, either physically or morally.  It is in full consciousness, as in full health and full strength, that they are massed there to hurl themselves once more into that sort of madman’s part imposed on all men by the madness of the human race.  One sees the thought and the fear and the farewell that there is in their silence, their stillness, in the mask of tranquillity which unnaturally grips their faces.  They are not the kind of hero one thinks of, but their sacrifice has greater worth than they who have not seen them will ever be able to understand.