The weather is atrocious--The attack will begin at four forty-five this morning--I rejoin the Morocco Division immediately----
Tell my boys that I want them to be soldiers like myself----
Do not weep at my death, which is coming, it is the most beautiful end a soldier may hope for----
I thank you for having made me happy on earth: you were my first love----
I kiss your lips for the last time--When you see mother, tell her my last thoughts were of her----
Every time an attack is planned it must rain. One must paddle along in the mud--and then the water runs down your neck----
As we will start before daybreak over the top, one, naturally, will stumble--we collect all kinds of sticks so that we may scrape the mud from our sleeves----
I find myself leaping over the first German lines--then, the wide open space before reaching the second position.
Our artillery has done good work, the wire entanglements are fortunately destroyed.
We leap over more trenches and _boyaux_--From time to time our glance is arrested by German corpses around which occasionally some of our own have fallen----
Bullets sing in every direction--machine-gun nests we have passed sputter at us from behind.
We go ahead without hesitation, but without speaking--one never speaks during these moments!
The field inclines and it is necessary to stop and pant a few instants--a circular view--prisoners hastily descend the hill, their arms raised, staggering like drunken men----
It is a nasty place to tarry any length of time--two boche machine-guns sixty yards to our right spit at us. Our advance can be effected, luckily, thanks to the deep craters our guns have made the preceding days. Day has fully broken--a fine rain is falling----
The position is as unmanageable as a runaway horse. We gain the second objective. The trench is wider than the former one and I cannot jump over it----
It is necessary to descend into the trench. I am followed by a few companions--A young German _blessé_ is stretched out in the bottom. He is extremely young. He has curly hair and so blond that he looks like a little child----
He has been thrown in a jumble and the partially demolished trench on top--his head is twisted and his body and legs are sticking up in the air----