We rode on. Soon, on the left, the sun came up cold out of Switzerland's white topped ridges miles away, and smiling frigidly across the snow-clad neutral Alps, dispelled the night mist in our part of the world.
The battery warmed under its glow. Village after village we passed through, returning the polite salutes of early rising grand-sires who uncovered their grey heads, or wrinkled, pink-faced grandmothers, who waved kerchiefs from gabled windows beneath the thatch and smiled the straight and dry-lipped smile of toothless age as they wished us good fortune in the war.
We messed at midday by the roadside, green fields and hills of France, our table decorations, cold beef and dry bread, our fare, with canteens full to wash it down. When the horses had tossed their nose-bags futilely for the last grains of oats, and the captain's watch had timed the rest at three-quarters of the hour, we mounted and resumed the march.
The equipment rode easy on man and beast. Packs had been shifted to positions of maximum comfort. The horses were still fresh enough to need tight rein. The men had made final adjustments to the chin straps on their new steel helmets and these sat well on heads that never before had been topped with armoured covering. In addition to all other equipment, each man carried two gas masks. Our top sergeant had an explanation for me as to this double gas mask equipment.
"I'll tell you about it," he said, as he ruthlessly accepted the next-to-the-last twenty-five centime Egyptian cigarette from my proffered case. I winced as he deliberately tore the paper from that precious fine smoke and inserted the filler in his mouth for a chew.
"You see, England and France and us is all Allies," he said. "Both of them loves us and we love both of them. We don't know nothing about gas masks and they knows all there is to know about them. The French say their gas mask is the best. The British say their gas mask is the best.
"Well, you see, they both offer us gas masks. Now Uncle Sam don't want to hurt nobody's feelings, so he says, 'Gentlemen, we won't fight about this here matter. We'll just use both gas masks, and give each of them a try-out.'
"So here we are carrying two of these human nose-bags. The first time we get into a mess of this here gas, somebody will send the order around to change masks in the middle of it—just to find out which is the best one."
The sergeant, with seeming malice, spat some of that fine cigarette on a roadside kilometer stone and closed the international prospects of the subject.
Our battery jangled through a tunnelled ridge and emerged on the other side just as a storm of rain and hail burst with mountain fury. The hailstones rattled on our metal helmets and the men laughed at the sound as they donned slickers. The brakes grated on the caisson wheels as we took the steep down-grade. The road hugged the valley wall which was a rugged, granite cliff.