There were not enough guns to bar their way, nor enough artillery ammunition; with our own eyes we had seen two batteries cease fire in mid-action--they had not thought of shells.

In a wide stretch of country, as one could see, there were no defense work, no trenches; they had not thought of trenches.
It is obvious even to the common eyes of common soldiers.
"What could we do ?" says one of us; "it's the chiefs." We say it and we should repeat it if we were not up again and swept away in the hustle of a fresh departure, and thrown back upon more immediate and important anxieties.
* * * * * * We do not know where we are.
We have marched all night.

More weariness bends our spines again, more obscurity hums in our heads.

By following the bed of a valley, we have found trenches again, and then men.

These splayed and squelched alleys, with their fat and sinking sandbags, their props which rot like limbs, flow into wider pockets where activity prevails--battalion H.Q., or dressing-stations.