of the men: they were the most
comforting sight of the day.

Farther north, and on the other bank of the Meuse, lies another
large village which has been turned into a colony of eclopes.
Fifteen hundred sick or exhausted men are housed there--and there
are no hot douches or chintz curtains to cheer them! We were taken
first to the church, a large featureless building at the head of the
street. In the doorway our passage was obstructed by a mountain of
damp straw which a gang of hostler-soldiers were pitch-forking out
of the aisles. The interior of the church was dim and suffocating.
Between the pillars hung screens of plaited straw, forming little
enclosures in each of which about a dozen sick men lay on more
straw, without mattresses or blankets. No beds, no tables, no
chairs, no washing appliances--in their muddy clothes, as they come
from the front, they are bedded down on the stone floor like cattle
till they are well enough to go back to their job. It was a pitiful
contrast to the little church at Blercourt, with the altar lights
twinkling above the clean beds; and one wondered if even so near the
front, it had to be. "The African village, we call it," one of our
companions said with a laugh: but the African village has blue sky
over it, and a clear stream runs between its mud huts.

We had been told at Sainte Menehould that, for military reasons, we
must follow a more southerly direction on our return to
Chalons; and when we left Verdun we took the road to
Bar-le-Duc. It runs southwest over beautiful broken country,
untouched by war except for the fact that its villages, like all the
others in this region, are either deserted or occupied by troops. As
we left Verdun behind us the sound of the cannon grew fainter and
died out, and we had the feeling that we were gradually passing
beyond the flaming boundaries into a more normal world; but
suddenly, at a cross-road, a sign-post snatched us back to war: _St.
Mihiel_, 18 _Kilometres_. St. Mihiel, the danger-spot of the region,
the weak joint in the armour! There it lay, up that harmless-looking
bye-road, not much more than ten miles away--a ten minutes' dash
would have brought us into the thick of the grey coats and spiked
helmets! The shadow of that sign-post followed us for miles,
darkening the landscape like the shadow from a racing storm-cloud.

Bar-le-Duc seemed unaware of the cloud. The charming old town was in
its normal state of provincial apathy: few sold