As we approached closer to the front we had expected to find the towns deserted except by troops. In this we were agreeably disappointed. As we entered St. Omer we found motors and waggons by the hundreds coming and going in a busy rush; every store was open too, and business was thriving with a thrift unknown before the war. Women and children, soldiers and civilians, crowded the busy streets, and the hum of industry was heard on every hand. Here not many miles from the trenches, we could see again the undaunted confidence of France, implicit reliance upon her troops, unswerving loyalty to her ideals—unutterable contempt for the possibility of further German invasion. It was a revelation in faith and a stimulus to merit such whole-souled unbreakable trust.
We had just drawn up at the curb in the city square when a big Rolls-Royce turned the corner and stopped close to us. It contained a man who wore the uniform of the British Red Cross Society, and who well matched the car in size; he descended and hastened over to our car.
"Jack!" he cried delightedly, "old Jack Wellcombe; by George, I'm glad to see you!" As he spoke he shook Jack warmly by the hand. "You and your friends must come over to the 'Bachelor's Own' with me."
Jack performed the round of introductions, and Mr. Harman, who proved to be an American from Texas, reiterated that we must come and dine with him.
"Thanks, Harman, old chap; we really must get along, we have to make Poperinghe to-night," Jack protested; but his American friend refused to take "no" for an answer.
"For," he concluded, parodying a line from a once popular opera, "'you really must eat somewhere, and it might as well be here.' Don't be in a hurry to get to Poperinghe," he continued. "I was over there this afternoon when a German aviator came to call. Just as a preliminary, and in order to show his good faith, he dropped a bomb on the church—Some crash, I tell you. It trimmed one corner off the tower and spattered the door rather badly."
"Was any one hurt?" Reggy enquired anxiously.
"Not at the moment," Harman replied, "but a few hundred fools, including your humble servant, rushed into the square 'to see what made the wheels go round.' He hovered over us gracefully for a few moments, waiting to collect a good crowd of spectators, then he dropped a big one right into the centre of the mass."
"Good Lord!" Reggy exclaimed in a horrified whisper, "what happened?"
"Nothing as bad as we deserved, but there were eleven killed and as many more wounded—it was a horrible sight! You'll see the effects of it still when you get there, in the broken windows and pieces of stone knocked out of the buildings for fifty yards around."