Campaign diary of a French officer

_February 12._ On the train, which at last is bearing us away to the war. My companions are asleep, wearied by a day and night of this endless journey. But I cannot sleep for jo...

_February 23._ At last! I have just been admitted to the sacred ranks of the _poilu_; I have just had a magnificent baptism of fire, and really the Boches have done me honor. Bu...

So I examine my domain. It is not very extensive, one hundred and twenty metres at the most, occupied by my sixty men. My trench is composed of the communication trench and two...

_March 3._ Great disappointment on reaching our cantonment. No letters! And yet it is thirty days since I came away. We are still at S. S. in the same quarters, except that I sh...

_March 15._ We returned yesterday to encampment. During the last five days, the most terrible I have yet spent, I have not had a minute of physical or mental quiet to write a si...

And then we went off duty. I was determined to be clean before I went to bed. A soldier employed at the bath-house was obliged to scrub me all over with a stiff brush. Not a spo...

_March 27._ I am writing my journal in a big underground shelter, comfortably stretched out in a hammock that someone has rigged up of two old tent-sheets. We are in an ugly sec...

(For a month our life is spent in marches and more or less prolonged stays in various encampments in the region of the Meuse—a calm existence, without many events of interest. M...

We have had a long journey, in order to travel a very few miles; we left at night, of course, and arrived late at night at Saint-Pol. On coming out of the station we found befor...

_June 9._ In the silence and quiet of a little hospital room, near a window where pink and white thorn-trees make a fragrant screen, I am going to recall the nightmare of a mont...

When I regained consciousness I was in the dug-out of an officer of the machine-gun section. He gave me some brandy, and I revived. Almost immediately afterward came the Boche c...