It is the barrage fire.  We have to go through that whirlwind of fire and those fearful showers that vertically fall.  We are passing through.  We are through it, by chance.  Here and there I have seen forms that spun round and were lifted up and laid down, illumined by a brief reflection from over yonder.  I have glimpsed strange faces that uttered some sort of cry—­you could see them without hearing them in the roar of annihilation.  A brasier full of red and black masses huge and furious fell about me, excavating the ground, tearing it from under my feet, throwing me aside like a bouncing toy.  I remember that I strode over a smoldering corpse, quite black, with a tissue of rosy blood shriveling on him; and I remember, too, that the skirts of the greatcoat flying next to me had caught fire, and left a trail of smoke behind.  On our right, all along Trench 97, our glances were drawn and dazzled by a rank of frightful flames, closely crowded against each other like men.

Forward!

Now, we are nearly running.  I see some who fall solidly flat, face forward, and others who founder meekly, as though they would sit down on the ground.  We step aside abruptly to avoid the prostrate dead, quiet and rigid, or else offensive, and also—­more perilous snares!—­the wounded that hook on to you, struggling.

The International Trench!  We are there.  The wire entanglements have been torn up into long roots and creepers, thrown afar and coiled up, swept away and piled in great drifts by the guns.  Between these big bushes of rain-damped steel the ground is open and free.

The trench is not defended.  The Germans have abandoned it, or else a first wave has already passed over it.  Its interior bristles with rifles placed against the bank.  In the bottom are scattered corpses.  From the jumbled litter of the long trench, hands emerge that protrude from gray sleeves with red facings, and booted legs.  In places the embankment is destroyed and its woodwork splintered—­all the flank of the trench collapsed and fallen into an indescribable mixture.  In other places, round pits are yawning.  And of all that moment I have best retained the vision of a whimsical trench covered with many-colored rags and tatters.  For the making of their sandbags the Germans had used cotton and woolen stuffs of motley design pillaged from some house-furnisher’s shop; and all this hotch-potch of colored remnants, mangled and frayed, floats and flaps and dances in our faces.

We have spread out in the trench.  The lieutenant, who has jumped to the other side, is stooping and summoning us with signs and shouts—­“Don’t stay there; forward, forward!”

We climb the wall of the trench with the help of the sacks, of weapons, and of the backs that are piled up there.  In the bottom of the ravine the soil is shot-churned, crowded with jetsam, swarming with prostrate bodies.  Some are motionless as blocks of wood; others move slowly or convulsively.  The barrage fire continues to increase its infernal discharge behind us on the ground that we have crossed.  But where we are at the foot of the rise it is a dead point for the artillery.