Every five minutes one's car would be held up by sentinels who rushed forward with poised bayonets, demanding the password for the day.
That always seemed to me like a bit of mediæval history.
"Arrêtez!" cried the sentinels, on either side the road, lifting their rifles as they spoke.
Of course we came to a stop immediately.
Then the chauffeur would lean far out, and whisper in a hoarse, low voice, the password, which varied with an incessant variety. Sometimes it would be "Ostend" or "Termond" or "Demain" or "General" or "Bruxelles" or "Belgique," or whatever the War Office chose to make it. Then the sentinel would nod. "Good," he would say, and on we would go.
The motor car lent me by the Belgian War Office, was driven by an excitable old Belgian, who loved nothing better than to get into a dangerous spot. His favourite saying, when we got near shell-fire, and one asked him if he were frightened, was: "One can only die once." And the louder the shells, the quicker he drove towards them; and I used to love the way his old eyes flashed, and I loved too the keenly disappointed look that crept over his face when the sentinels refused to let him go any nearer the danger line, and we had to creep ignominiously back to safety.
"Does not your master ever go towards the fighting?" I asked him.
"Non, madame," he answered sadly, "Mon general, he is the PAPA of the Commissariat! He does not go near the fighting. He only looks after the eating."
We left Antwerp one morning about nine o'clock, and sped outwards through the fortifications, being stopped every ten minutes as usual by the sentinels and asked to show our papers. On we ran along the white tree-lined roads through exquisite green country. The roads were crowded constantly with soldiers coming and going, and in all the villages we found the Headquarters of one or other Division of the Belgian Army, making life and bustle indescribable in the flagged old streets, and around the steps of the quaint mediæval Town Halls and Cathedrals.