After twenty or so kilos had been reeled off physical exhaustion invaded man after man, growling ceased, heads bent forward and the eyes watched unseeing the heels of the man ahead. Mechanical rigidity of monotonous, torturous march again held sway, the old dryness of tongue and aching of burning feet grew more and more acute at each heavy step forward.
An hour passed in painful silence, and another, but ever onward along the long trail of miles—left, right, left. At each step you muttered it softly—left right—or counted them one by one until the mind rambled on confused in tens of thousands. A stage had been attained when one felt nothing, knew nothing, but just the unending chorus of padding feet guided by the mere instinct of a mind in a condition of peculiar coma. The ten minute halts were taken at each hour with no comment. Men threw themselves prone on the road, closed eyes, stood up unthinking at the order and fell again into the harsh rigidity of movement.
Just before dusk the "machine" halted at Verchocq, after a march of thirty-three kilos. They were tired, worn, hungry....
No lorries or cookers turned up that night!
Followed that abrupt revival of spirits that cannot but remain a pyschological mystery. No cookers—no grub. They threw aside without an effort complete exhaustion, the outcome of an entire day's strenuous bodily exertion, sallied forth with remarkable sangfroid and certainty in Verchocq, there conversing with the inhabitants, made themselves thoroughly at home and gratefully partook of the hot fare hospitably provided them—the fierce inroads upon food that only the utterly famished can readily appreciate, and which indelibly impressed upon the intellect of their hosts a certainty that British troops could never have their appetite satiated.
They returned to billets in varying moods and conditions, one or two ignoring a straight walk and zig-zagging an uncertain course across the roads. Stumpy, who had received a generous welcome from a misguided patriot, sat down with smug complacency, holding one hand lovingly over an abdomen over-filled with good fare.
"Weren't 'alf orl right," he said "lawd, wot with five eggs an' 'am an' bread; but there weren't any beer, only," with a shudder, "a 'ome-made lemonade."
"Yus," Duquemin agreed, "dam good-hic-sort these French people. Fine lil' daughter wi' blue-hic-eyes. 'Eld my 'and, and she hic-said was brave-hic soldier. Ver' proud ... 'allo wot-hic-doing'."
A lad was kneeling in his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously—but had anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked the b——scoffer's 'ead orf."
Strange ingrained instinctive assertion of fair play predominant in the attitude of those wild, uncouth mortals. Few of them had thought of outward expression of God—a fierce resentment world galvanise into life at the slightest sneer upon the unprotected back of those who HAD the pluck. From his couch in a solitary blanket the agnostic grunted.