Forward! The world's hurricane drives straight before them these terribly blind who grope with their rifles.
We have passed through a wood, and then plunged again into the earth.
We are caught in an enfilading fire.

It is terrible to pass in broad daylight in these communication trenches, at right angles to the lines, where one is in view all the way.

Some soldiers are hit and fall.
There are light eddies and brief obstructions in the places where they dive; and then the rest, a moment halted by the barrier, sometimes still living, frown in the wide-open direction of death, and say:-- "Well, if it's got to be, come on.

Get on with it!" They deliver up their bodies wholly--their warm bodies, that the bitter cold and the wind and the sightless death touch as with women's hands.
In these contacts between living beings and force, there is something carnal, virginal, divine.
* * * * * * They have sent me into a listening post.

To get there I had to worm myself, bent double, along a low and obstructed sap.