Along with us are emptied batteries also climbing, and horses and clouds of steam and all the horror of modern war.

Each man pushes this retreat on, and is pushed by it; and as our panting becomes one long voice, we go up and up, baffled by our own weight which tries to fall back, deformed by our knapsacks, bent and silent as beasts.
From the summit we see the trembling inundation, murmuring and confused, filling the trenches we have just left, and seeming already to overflow them.

But our eyes and ears are violently monopolized by the two batteries between which we are passing; they are firing into the infinity of the attackers, and each shot plunges into life.

Never have I been so affected by the harrowing sight of artillery fire.

The tubes bark and scream in crashes that can hardly be borne; they go and come on their brakes in starts of fantastic distinctness and violence.
In the hollows where the batteries lie hid, in the middle of a fan-shaped phosphorescence, we see the silhouettes of the gunners as they thrust in the shells.