We mounted guard in trenches, we fitted ourselves into some stripped and sinister corner which stood out against a charred twilight or against fire.

We were condemned to see the same abysses always.
For two nights we bent fiercely to the mending of an old third-line trench above the ruin of its former mending.

We repaired the long skeleton, soft and black, of its timbers.

From that dried-up drain we besomed the rubbish of equipment, of petrified weapons, of rotten clothes and of victuals, of a sort of wreckage of forest and house--filthy, incomparably filthy, infinitely filthy.

We worked by night and hid by day.