A forced march of thirty kilometres through the night. At eleven o'clock we reach Courmelles, utterly worn out. Whilst waiting until our quarters are ready, we lie down pêle-mêle on the road alongside the houses. A Moroccan brigade crosses the village. The moonlight projects a bluish light on to the rapid and silent march of these men, wrapped in great hoods and with enormous haversacks towering above their heads: Mâtho's mercenaries. They are going in a northerly direction.
The squadron sleeps in a loft abounding in straw. To cover my body I have a potato sack, which I use as a hood in the daytime.
Saturday, 3rd October.
At ten in the morning we are still asleep, snugly ensconced in the straw. For a month we have not once had a sufficiency of sleep.
Lieutenant Roberty summons us: Reymond, Maxence, Verrier and myself. His room is at our disposal for a wash and a change of linen. For this evening he converts his bed into two and shares it with us.
I receive a wire from Paris, which was dispatched on the 18th of September. A fortnight on the way! Evidently letters take less time: a good thing, too!
Many of the houses in Courmelles have been abandoned. In one of them the squadron makes arrangements for meals, a corporal—in ordinary life a mountebank—acting as cook. He whistles a number of popular airs whilst making a fricassee of three rabbits in an iron foot-pan. It is dinner-time. The rabbits are not fit to eat; they are burnt, and have an after-taste of soap. We turn up our noses, and I am the only one willing to taste the stew. I become nicknamed "the eater of filthy food," but this does not trouble me in the slightest. Luckily there is an enormous dish of fried potatoes, and the baker has consented to sell us some hot white bread.
Varlet and Charensac have gone for a stroll to Soissons. They had to cut across fields to escape the gendarmes, who pursued them a considerable distance. They return hot and perspiring, greatly excited, and laden with rare dainties: any quantity of tobacco, chocolate, preserves, dubbing, writing-paper, couch grass brushes and pipes.
Soissons is filled with English soldiers and business seems very thriving. The town is exceedingly animated. Every one is overjoyed at the thought that the place is free of the enemy.
Sunday, 4th October.