n a lot to the
British Army on the Western Front. What sights one saw there!--masses
of humanity, mostly British officers and men, each with their little (p. 056)
"movement order": there they were in the heart of the Gay City. Yet
that little slip of paper would, in a couple of hours, send them to
Amiens, and a little later they would be at the front suffering Hell.
Laboreur did a wonderful etching of an officer bidding farewell to his
wife at the Gare du Nord. It gave the whole tragedy of the place--the
blackness, smoke, smell and crush. There, any night during an air
raid, one could not help thinking what would happen if the Boche got a
bomb on the Gare, with its thousands of fighting men all jambed
together under its glass roof in the semi-darkness. What a slaughter!
And yet through it all, if the old Gare could only speak, it could
tell some strange and amusing tales of that time--tales that would
make one laugh, but with the laughter there would be a catch in the
throat and a swimming in the eyes. It is extraordinary how funny
sometimes the most tragic things can be.

The weather had become very bad and cold, and I worked on all
impossible out-of-door days in my room in the "Hotel de la Paix,"
which was known as the "Bar." My only rule was that the "Bar" was not
open till 6.30 p.m. At times it nearly rivalled "Charlie's Bar." At
what hour the "Bar" closed I was not always certain, as, no matter who
was there, at about 10:30 I used to undress and go to bed, and so
accustomed did I get to the clink of glasses and the squirt of the
syphons that I slept calmly through it all. Among the regular
attendants when in Amiens were Captain Maude, "Major" Hogg, Colonel
MacDowall of the 42nd G.H., Colonel Woodcock, Colonel Belfield (the
Spot King), Captain Ernest Courage (Jorrocks), Captains Hale and Inge
(then of the Press), Bedelo (Italian correspondent), and Captain
Brickman--a merry lot, taking them all round, and that room heard some
good stories; some may have been not quite nice, but none were as (p. 057)
dirty or disreputable as the room itself, with its smell of mud,
paint, drink, smoke, and the fumes from the famous "Flamme Bleue"
stove. The last man to leave the bar had to open the window. This was
a firm rule. It sometimes took the last man a long time to do it, but
it was always done.

[Illustration: XXIII. _Changing Billets._]

By this period of the war nearly every French girl could speak some
English, an