imself by any
means at home in Baerlaere, remarked that he had a wife and family
dependent on him.

Mr. L. replied with dignity that he had a wife and family too, and that
we all had somebody or something; and that War Correspondents cannot
afford to think of their wives and families at these moments.

Mr. M.'s face backed up Mr. L. with an expression of extreme
determination.

The little Belgian lady smiled placidly and imperturbably, with an air
of being ready to go anywhere where these intrepid Englishmen should see
fit to take her.

I felt a little sorry for the chauffeur. He had been out with the War
Correspondents several times already, and I hadn't.

We left him and his car behind us in the village, squeezed very tight
against a stable wall that stood between them and the German fire. We
four went on a little way beyond the village and turned into a bridle
path across the open fields. At the bottom of a field to our left was a
small slump of willows; we had heard the Belgian guns firing from that
direction a few minutes before. We concluded that the battery was
concealed behind the willows. We strolled on like one half of a picnic
party that has been divided and is looking innocently for the other half
in a likely place.[17] But as we came nearer to the willows we lost our
clue. The battery had evidently made up its mind not to fire as long as
we were in sight. Like the cloud of smoke from the Schoonard factory, it
eluded us successfully. And indeed it is hardly the way of batteries to
choose positions where interested War Correspondents can come out and
find them.[18]

So we went back to the village, where we found the infantry being drawn
up in order and doing something to its rifles. For one thrilling moment
I imagined that the Germans were about to leap out of their trenches and
rush the village, and that the Belgians [? French] were preparing for a
bayonet charge.

"In that case," I thought, "we shall be very useful in picking up the
wounded and carrying them away in that car."

I never thought of the ugly rush and the horrors after it. It is
extraordinary how your mind can put away from it any thought that would
make life insupportable.

But no, they were not fixing bayonets. They were not doing anything to
their rifles; they were only stacking them.

It was then that you thought of the ugly rush and were glad that, after
all, it wouldn't happen.

You were glad--and yet in spite of that same