We make a passage through a hawthorn hedge with a few blows of the axe and cross the fields in spite of the invectives of the gendarmes who persist in trying to make us circle round in regular order, just as though we were going around the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.
“Here, brave gendarmes, they pass as they can. Guns thunder. Shells are near, and it is necessary to arrive at the appointed time.”
“Instructions thought out by some officer in the peace and quiet of a faraway office are all rot. Go on, you’ll find out.”
A Commandant’s Post [See page 165]
We are beyond the village an hour later and are on the highway which leads to the bridge at Cappy.
Here, things are askew again. We must cross to get over the bridge. We can’t go around that. So we get into the string of wagons and follow their pace. They advance in skips and jumps ... they go ahead ten yards, stop a quarter of an hour, and begin again. One would think he was in the line at the Opéra on the day of a free performance.
We stand about in one spot more than three hours.
Finally, about midnight we reach the entrance to the bridge.
A new delay!