It was dark outside and the long light from the searchlights was moving over the mountains. There were big searchlights on that front mounted on camions that you passed sometimes on the roads at night, close behind the lines, the camion stopped a little off the road, an officer directing the light and the crew scared. We crossed the brickyard, and stopped at the main dressing station. There was a little shelter of green branches outside over the entrance and in the dark the night wind rustled the leaves dried by the sun. Inside there was a light. The major was at the telephone sitting on a box. One of the medical captains said the attack had been put forward an hour. He offered me a glass of cognac. I looked at the board tables, the instruments shining in the light, the basins and the stoppered bottles. Gordini stood behind me. The major got up from the telephone.

“It starts now,” he said. “It has been put back again.”

I looked outside, it was dark and the Austrian searchlights were moving on the mountains behind us. It was quiet for a moment still, then from all the guns behind us the bombardment started.