He splashed away in the mud.
Our new sleeping place was worse: the mud was deeper, the road narrower. Jo tried to escape the mud and made for the roadside, but the ground moved under her and some muttered curses arose. She was walking not on grass but on crowds of sleeping boys, and very nearly trod on a face. We settled down again on our mackintosh sheet but did not sleep. Some soldiers were firing off guns and throwing bombs into the river all night. Near us lay Owen, who coughed for a couple of hours, after which he gave up the spot as being too wet, and lay in a cart on Whatmough's face.
It rained, Jo had the fidgets, and Jan expostulated. The mackintosh was too small for us and we got gloriously wet. It is a curious feeling—the rain pattering on one's face when trying to sleep. By the time one becomes accustomed to the monotony of the tiny drops—splash a big drop from a tree. Water collects in folds of hat or rug, and suddenly cascades down one's neck.
At four in the morning the corporal crept up submissively to ask if we might move on, as the horses were cold and hungry. Only too glad, dark as it was, we rolled up our damp bundles and put them in the waggons with the sleeping people, who awoke, pink-eyed and puzzled at the sudden progress forward of their uncomfortable beds. Whatmough, who was convinced that the bombs and gunshots of the night before were spent Austrian shells sailing over the hill, said—
"That's the first time I've ever liked a fellow sleeping on my face."
One of the Stobart nurses, who had used the remains of the hay as a pillow, had been awake all night trying to prevent a hungry horse from eating her hair along with the hay. With determination she had donned a Balaklava helmet and trudged along all day in it, even later when the sun came out. Blease, too, started the chillsome dawn in a Balaklava wearing shawlwise a rug that had been made of bits of various coloured woollen scarfs. Jan used as a protection from the rain Jo's white mackintosh apron filleted round his head with a bit of string and dangling behind with a profusion of tapes and fasteners.
Under his khaki great-coat and about a foot longer he wore a white jaconet hospital coat. Jo had a pair of roomy ski boots into which she had fitted two pairs of stockings; one had been knitted for her by a Serbian girl, and they were so thick and hard that no suspender would hold them up, so they stood, concertinawise, over the boots. One of our drivers, a witch-faced old man, had a dark red cloak with a peaked hood; and West having lost his hat had donned a Serbian soldier's cap, which he was taking away as a curiosity. His arm was giving him pain. It was very red and inflamed and no one knew what was the matter with it.
We travelled for an hour or so, and then everything on the road came to a standstill—something was in the way. Half an hour passed, nothing was done. Several miles of drivers were talking, gesticulating, and blaspheming; so Jan took on the job of traffic superintendent, and after a time, with a little backing here and twisting there, the problem was solved and we moved on. Still no hay stations could be found, and we were also hungry, having had no breakfast. We passed a mound covered with thousands of Austrian prisoners waking up in the twilight. Another hill was black with boys. Still no station. Then we saw some haystacks being taken to pieces by various drivers. Our ten coachmen ran to the stacks and came back with loads of hay which they packed in the carts. In five minutes the haystacks existed no more.