The Belgian frontier was crossed at sunset and the fringe of war's devastation penetrated. Little interest or casual comment was aroused, although a reputable thirsty one remarked that he thought Jerry might have spared the village pub.
The long line of dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard cobbles or ...? Faintly over the damp air came a long, insistent murmur. Hearts beat faster.... Guns!
Northward and then West the train panted up a slight grade, made a wide curve and then abruptly shut off steam. Long white tapering lights sprang up from nowhere, wavered and hesitated over the sky; caught in their glare a silvery bird and followed it across the night. Without warning an anti-aircraft gun launched with a deafening roar its whining shell heavenwards. Boom! In the sudden uproar Le Page fell off the train, jerking his tin of bully beef into Clarke's shaving water. The Jerry airman circled higher, dived again—and dropped his bomb, missing the train by hundreds of yards. He had spotted the smoke belching from the engine. Again he spiralled higher, slipped the converging net of searchlights and escaped ... ;... ugh! The Ten Hundred breathed a sigh of relief.
Disembarkation from a train at a point a few miles in the rear of the Front Line always tends to put the wind up you. The mental survey of a thousand men en bloc conveys immediately to the mind what an obvious and unmistakable target a battalion forms. Eyes apprehensively search the sky for the danger that each one knows lurks somewhere up there in that black pall, the darker by contrast with the brilliant spearheads of light searching to and fro.
And of course in such windy moments the order to march off is delayed. Then when you ARE well on your way you wish you were not, for there is an unutterable weariness in those marches to bivouacs amid dead silence from end to end of the ranks; only ever present on the ear that unceasing booming of heavies or the nearer and unpleasant kr-ru-up of a not-far-distant German shell. Worn, sadly worn, beneath the staggering weight of packs on aching shoulders, where chafed skin smarts under the straps, head bent forward and downwards, one cared little for direction. Onward, always onward, feet burning with heavy going in clogging Belgian mud.... Sleep, one longs to lie down there and then to sleep, anyhow, anywhere!
Bivouacs are under the best of circumstances mere makeshifts. "Stoke Camp"—CAMP! The irony of it—was on a par with the average. Here and there a scattered tent, here and there a sheet or two of oilcloth, and everywhere an abundance of water.
Still it was a haven of rest. Men filed tiredly by in Companies, sorted themselves out, and cast down packs; boots were jerked off anyhow, rifles stacked. Each man wrapped around him that old and trusty friend—his overcoat, heads rested on the hard packs ... doze and dream....
Three headquarters scouts are turned out for guard!
Two hours swinging up and down, then four hours sleep: and then ... the mind of the overworn first sentry sickens. Again and again over the muddy uneven strip, watching fascinated the weird, mad shadows cast in gaunt trees from a perpetual red glow eastwards. From amid the bivouacs a lad cries fitfully in his uneasy sleep; a hardy few can be seen by the glow of cigarettes sitting beneath a solitary tarpaulin.
From the distance something high in the heavens hummed softly the while here and there far-off searchlights twinkled, one after another picking up the trail until the whole sky was ablaze with wavering shafts of light. The murmuring grew to a roar, accompanied by a deafening din of an Archie (anti-aircraft) barrage and the unceasing rattle of machine guns.