They advance in columns, in thick, packed lines of attack, behind which are drawn up support troops, Indian lancers, ready to turn the English breakthrough on the wing of the attack front into a devastating defeat of our centre. The sentries, who had to remain outside throughout the drumfire, rise out of the shell-holes. Dust and dirt lie a centimetre-thick on their faces and uniforms. Their cry of warning rings piercingly in the narrow gaps that form the dugout entrance. No longer must we calm, hold down, tie down those men whom almost lose their minds through this pounding, booming and splintering, through difficulty in breathing and through the jerking and swaying of the dugout walls, and whom with overtly trembling limbs want to get up away from this hole and this mousetrap, up into the open air, into a landscape of raging flames and iron - a landscape of insanity and death.
Red flares climb high then fade away as they fall to the ground.
Behind us the guns lie destroyed in their emplacements, their wheels upwards, their barrels in the dirt. An enormous crater left by the impact of the English heavy shells yawns at the site of the gun emplacements. Most of the crews are dead, lying buried in tunnels and bunkers. The summer of 1916, the time of the great artillery shortage. The barrel's scorching hot, the coolant's boiling - the gunners' hands are nearly scorched, scalded.