s was thronging the main street of the village. Old
men and women were carrying all that was left to them of their property
on their backs. Others were pushing wheelbarrows heaped up with clothes
and household utensils. Girls were carrying heavy bundles under their
arms and dragging tired, tearful children along. White-faced, sorrowful
mothers were carrying peevish babies. Great wagons, loaded with
furniture and bedding, and whole families sitting on top, were drawn by
lank and bony horses. A little cart, with a pallid, aged woman cowering
inside, was drawn painfully along by a white-haired man. They passed by
us in the gathering gloom, and there seemed to be no end to these
straggling multitudes of ruined, homeless people who were wandering
westwards to escape the disaster that threatened to engulf us all.

The eastern sky flickered with vivid gun-flashes and scintillated with
brilliant shell-bursts. The night was full of rustling noises and sullen
thunder-claps, while a more distant roaring and rumbling seemed to break
against some invisible shore like the breakers of a stormy sea.

We retired to our huts and tents. Soon after lights-out the Police
Corporal came round and shouted:

"Parade at 4.45 to-morrow morning in marching order."

The tumult increased as though the surge were coming nearer and nearer.
Shells of small calibre passed overhead with a prolonged whistle and
burst with a hardly audible report. The thunder of bigger explosions
shook the huts and caused the ground to tremble.

As I woke the next morning the din of the cannonade broke in upon my
senses with a sudden impact. Rumbling, thundering, bellowing, rushing,
whistling, and whining, the tumult seemed all around and above us.
Sudden flashes lit up the whole camp so that for fractions of seconds
every hut and tent was brilliantly illuminated. Multitudes of dazzling
stars appeared and disappeared.

We drew our breakfast and packed up our belongings. All was confusion in
the hut.

We paraded, the roll was called, and as the day began to dawn we marched
off.

We passed down the main road in long, swaying columns of fours. We left
the woodyard behind us and hoped it would be destroyed--how we hated the
place for the dreary months we had spent there! The westward stream of
refugees had ceased, but an eastward stream of French infantry and field
artillery thronged the roads. The artillerymen were mostly tall and
powerfully built. The infantry were