women and old men were rarely met by day, for
they were at work on the land, solitary figures on the landscape, with
vast spaces between them. In the quiet townships, English street signs
and placards conflicted with the sense of being in friendly provincial
France, and gave the impression of foreign domination. For beyond that
long grim line of eternal thunder, away over there in the distance,
which was called the Front, street signs and placards in yet another
alien tongue also outraged the serene genius of French urban life. Yet
our signs were a symbol of a mighty Empire's brotherhood, and the
dimmed eyes that beheld the _Place de la Fontaine_ transformed into
"Holborn Circus," and the _Grande Rue_ into "Piccadilly," smiled, and
the owners, with eager courtesy, directed the stray Tommy to "Regent
Street," which they had known all their life as the _Rue
Feuillemaisnil_--a word which Tommy could not pronounce, still less
remember. It was as much as Tommy could do to get hold of an
approximation to the name of the town. And besides these renamings,
other inscriptions flamed about the streets; alphabetical hieroglyphs,
in which the mystic letters H.Q. most often appeared; "This way to the
Y.M.C.A. hut"; in many humble windows the startling announcement,
"Washing done here." British motor-lorries and ambulances crowding the
little _place_ and aligned along the avenues. British faces, British
voices, everywhere. The blue uniform and blue helmet of a French
soldier seemed as incongruous though as welcome as in London.

And the straight endless roads, so French with their infinite border
of poplars, their patient little stones marking every hundred metres
until the tenth rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the
distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British
voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British
transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed
the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely
cultivated land remained to show that it was France; and the little
whitewashed villages; the cure, in shovel-hat and rusty cassock; the
children in blue or black blouses, who stared as the British troops
went by; the patient, elderly French Territorials in their old pre-war
uniforms, guarding unthreatened culverts or repairing the roads; the
helpful signs set up in happier days by the Touring Club of France.

Into this strange anomaly of a l