Two soldiers are called to the tent of Captain Hailes. They seem shaken and Captain Hailes asks why they were forty seconds late in taking one of the trenches with the rest of their soldiers. One of the men, Major Fouquet, says that they caught up to take the second trench, but Captain Hailes asks how. Fouquet begins to ramble about how there were children in the trenches and not a mark on any of them. He then begins to tell the Captain a story of a battle in 1914 when the German forces were overwhelming French defenders in Paris and one of the battalions held strong while the rest of the army was able to escape. There were only two survivors from the battalion: Fouquet and a man named Barres, who was left crippled from the attack, but is still fighting in the war as an aviator. Barres enters the room with the three men discussing what happened. After the death of the battalion, the wives of the men who died also wanted to fight in the war and protested for their right to fight. They finally got it and joined the battalion under Fouquet. Fouquet then tells of what happened in the trenches, saying that they approached the first trench and found it filled with the enemy soldiers as well as a collection of French children. The women were unable to fight in the trenches, being afraid to kill the children, but suddenly a large white fog came down and killed the enemy soldiers and left the children unharmed. Fouquet says that in the fog were the ghosts of the husbands of the women there. Barres says that he saw the large white fog from the air. The living battalion then used the enemy's tunnels to make up time, and followed as the fog went ahead of them and killed the enemy soldiers. Captain Hailes dismisses the men.