One spring broke, but we went forward sailor-fashion, with a jury- rig of chain and rope, after getting more gas from some Christian monks, who swore they hadn't any and wept when one of Feisul's officers demonstrated that they lead.

You couldn't see any monastery; I don't even know that there was one--nothing but lean faces with tonsured tops that nodded in unison and lied fearfully.
The gunfire began to be heavy about that time, although nothing like the thousand-throated bedlam of Flanders.

As neither side could see the other and neither had any ranges marked, my guess is that the French were advertising their advance--doing a little propaganda that was cheap for all concerned except the tax-payers.

And the Syrian army was shooting back crazily, sending over long shots on the off chance, more to encourage themselves than for any other reason.
The sensation was rather like riding in an ambulance away from the battle instead of toward it, for you couldn't see anything and you had a sense of helpless detachment from it all, as if a power you couldn't control were carrying you away from a familiar destiny to one that you couldn't imagine.

It wasn't so much like a dream as like a different, real existence that you couldn't understand because it bore no kind of relation to anything in the past.
Anyhow, we bumped and blundered on until dawn came, streaked with wonderful rolling mist, and gave a glimpse at intervals of a wide plain sloping toward the west, with long lines of infantry and here and there guns extended across it in parallels drawn north and south.
The rifle firing started ten minutes after dawn, and it was all over in less than half an hour; but I can't describe exactly how the finish came, because the wind was toward us and the morning mist blew along in blanketing white masses that only allowed you a momentary glimpse and then shut off the view.
We were about a mile behind the firing-line and I couldn't see Feisul's car or any of the others.