I don’t recall being scared. What I did have, though, and what is a more agonizing sensation, is the feeling of dying. It was during an offensive when the French Army was moving forward through the German lines–April 16, 1917. I was wounded six or seven kilometers inside the German lines. A shell exploded near me; my arm, my chest, my whole left leg were bleeding. My knee was broken, and I was limping. I was all alone, and I had to find a way to get back to the French emergency station that was almost six kilometers behind me. But the battlegrounds were covered with trenches and craters and obstacles of all kinds–and dead bodies. All that kept you from making headway. It was a lunar landscape. I never would have made it if I hadn’t had the help of another wounded officer. His arm had been burned, but he could still walk. He found me at the bottom of a trench just at the moment when I couldn’t go on any longer and helped me back to the French station. That man saved my life. I never knew who he was; he disappeared after that. He was only 20.
