he had gone,
just as a mist sways above the ground after the night has flown.

At first we thought that no one at home cared about the war--then we
realised it was impossible for anybody to care about the war who had not
seen war. People might be intensely interested in the course of
operations. They might burn for their country's success, and flame out
against those who threatened her. They might suffer torments of anxiety
for a brother in danger, or the tortures of grief for a brother who had
died. The FACT of war, the terror and the shame, the bestiality and the
awful horror, the pity and the disgust--they could never _know_ war. So
we thought them careless....

Again, though we had been told very many had enlisted, the streets
seemed ludicrously full of men. In the streets of Flanders there are
women and children and old men and others. These others would give all
that they had to put on uniform and march gravely or gaily to the
trenches. In Flanders a man who is fit and wears no uniform is instantly
suspected of espionage. I am grinding no axe. I am advocating nothing or
attacking nothing. I am merely stating as a fact that, suspicious and
contemptuous as we had been in Flanders of every able-bodied man who was
not helping to defend his country, it seemed grotesque to us to find so
many civilian men in the streets of the country to which we had
returned.

Of the heavenly quietness and decency of life, of late breakfasts and
later dinners, there is no need to tell, but even before the week was up
unrest troubled us. The Division might go violently into action. The
Germans might break through. The "old Div." would be wanting us, and we
who felt towards the Division as others feel towards their Regiments
were eager to get back....

On the boat I met Gibson. At Boulogne we clambered into the same bus and
passed the time in sipping old rum, eating chocolate biscuits, reading
the second volume of 'Sinister Street,' and sleeping. At St Omer our
craving for an omelette nearly lost us the bus. Then we slept. All that
I can remember of the rest of the journey is that we stopped near
Bailleul. An anxious corporal popped his head in.

"Mr Brown here?"

"Ye--e--s," sleepily, "what the devil do you want?"

"Our battery's in action, sir, a few miles from here. I've got your
horses ready waiting, sir."

Mr Brown was thoroughly awake in a moment. He disturbed everybody
collecting his kit. Then he vanished.

We were lat