Sam!' said the colonel, astonished. Then he tackled the
Australian.

"'What authority have you for taking away this coal?' he asked.

"The Australian stood up and said, 'I don't want any authority--I bally
well fought for it,' and went on with his shovelling.

"Frankly, the colonel didn't know what to say; but he has a sense of
humour. 'Extraordinary fellows!' he said to me as we walked off.

"Then we came across an American who was 'scrounging' or something in
an empty house. He jumped to attention when he saw the colonel, and
saluted very smartly. But what do you think? He saluted with a bowler
hat on,--found it in the house, I expect.... I tell you, it was an
eye-opening day for the colonel."

I lorry-hopped to the village that I had been told was Divisional
Headquarters; but they had moved the day before, seven miles farther
forward. There were nearly 200 civilians here. I saw a few faded,
ancient men in worn corduroys and blue-peaked caps; a bent old crone,
in a blue apron, hobbled with a water-bucket past a corner shop--a
grocer's--shuttered, sluttish from want of paint; three tiny children,
standing in doorways, wore a strangely old expression. There was a
pathetically furtive air about all these people. For four years they
had been under the Boche. Of actual, death-bringing, frightening war
they had seen not more than five days. The battle had swept over and
beyond them, carrying with it the feared and hated German, and the main
fighting force of the pursuing British as well. But it was too soon yet
for them to forget, or to throw off a sort of lurking dread that even
now the Boche might return.

I got a lift in another lorry along a road crumbling under the unusual
amount of traffic that weighed upon it. Our advance had been so swift
that the war scars on the countryside had not entirely blighted its
normal characteristics. Here were shell-holes, but no long succession
of abandoned gun-positions, few horse-tracks, fewer trenches, and no
barbed wire. The villages we went through had escaped obliterating
shell fire. I learned that our attacks had been planned thus-wise. Near
a bleak cross-roads I saw Collinge of B Battery, and got off the lorry
to talk to him.

"Brigade Headquarters are at Bousies, about six miles from here," he
said. "I'm going that way. The batteries are all in Bousies."

"What sort of a time have you had?" I inquired.

"Oh, most exciting! Shan't forget the day we crossed the Le Catea