It was the call to arms.
The sleepy troopers, half awake, sat up in their beds with a start—“Hulloa!—what? What is the matter?... Are we really mobilising?”
Then followed the sound of heavy boots in the corridors, heavy knocks on the doors, the silence of the night was a thing of the past and had given place to deafening clatter.
In a few seconds every man was on his feet without any clear idea as to what was forward. The sergeant-major called to me: “Mallet—run and warn the officers of the squadron to strap on their mess tins with their equipment and assemble in barracks as quickly as possible.”
So it’s serious, is it? and in a flash the truth, the very reverse of what I had been trying to believe, forced itself upon me and paralysed all other power of thought. Whether it breaks out to-morrow or in a month’s time, it is war—relentless war—that I seem to see like a living picture revealed.
The impression masters my mind as I turn each corner of the dark streets and open spaces, and the cathedral with its twin towers, so peacefully standing there, is transformed into a giant fortress watching over the safety of the country-side.
A man comes out of a house on the place and runs after me, I hear his heavy shoes striking the pavement behind me; breathless he blurts out the question, “Is war declared?”
“War ... yes ... that is to say, I don’t know.”
I continue on my way to carry out my orders with enough time left to run up to my own rooms and get some money and clean linen.