six o'clock in the morning
They would bear their cross to the bitter end , atoning with their life 's blood for the faults of others , glorious amid disaster and defeat . And then it was that Maurice , there in the darkness that was instinct with life , became conscious that a great duty lay before him . He ceased to beguile himself with the illusive prospect of great victories to be gained ; the march to Verdun was a march to death , and he so accepted it , since it was their lot to die , with brave and cheerful resignation . On Tuesday , the 23d of August , at six o'clock in the morning , camp was broken , and as a stream that has momentarily expanded into a lake resumes its course again , the hundred and odd thousand men of the army of Chalons put themselves in motion and soon were pouring onward in a resistless torrent ; and notwithstanding the rumors that had been current since the preceding day , it was a great surprise to most to see that instead of continuing their retrograde movement they were leaving Paris behind them and turning their faces toward the unknown regions of the East . At five o'clock in the morning the 7th corps was still unsupplied with cartridges . For two days the artillerymen had been working like beavers to unload the _ materiel _ , horses , and stores that had been streaming from Metz into the overcrowded station , and it was only at the very last moment that some cars of cartridges were discovered among the tangled trains , and that a detail which included Jean among its numbers was enabled to bring back two hundred and forty thousand on carts that they had hurriedly requisitioned . Jean distributed the regulation number , one hundred cartridges to a man , among his squad , just as Gaude , the company bugler , sounded the order to march .