25 September 1915: deadly attack in Champagne
At exactly nine fifteen, the entire section leapt out of the trench as one, but two hundred metres to our left a group had gone over at least twenty seconds before H-hour. Two machine guns caught us in enfilade. Most of my men threw themselves to the ground. That was their undoing. They all had a large square of white cloth sewn onto their backs, so that our aircraft could track our front line as it advanced; and so that accursed square of cloth became a perfect target for the enemy machine gunners. 35 of my 38 men were killed. The three who survived were among the bravest; they had followed me right into the barbed wire, and ahead or even within the wire entanglements, we were able to find craters dug by our heavy shells, craters in which we could take shelter. Thus it was the four who had advanced the farthest who escaped death.
As for myself, I must say it plainly: while reconnoitring the German wire alone at around five o'clock in the morning, I received a bullet in my left shoulder, but I refused to abandon my section on the eve of the attack. My men knew I was wounded, they knew I would go over the top with them regardless, and had I done otherwise they would not have recognised me.
And so I could ask these brave men anything I wished, and they proved it that day. As I bounded toward the German trench, I took a petard in the legs; I kicked it away with a violent blow, but the device exploded almost immediately, riddling me with a multitude of small fragments, some of which remain in my body to this day. My greatcoat was turned into a sieve. I tried to take cover in the wire, 20 metres from the Germans, who did not believe me to be so close. I crawled toward a crater dug by a 'minen', and I reached it, but at that moment a bullet entering through the sole of my left shoe ploughed through the bottom of my foot.
I could bear no more. I lost consciousness and was not recovered until the evening. I can recall nothing of what happened after that.