Leaving Meaux, the spirit of attack already seemed to be entering the men. Outside the city they met an old man with a patriarchal beard, seated upon his household goods, which were piled upon a little cart driven by a mule. Beside the cart walked a woman that might have been either his wife or his daughter. The old man looked as if he were crying. His mouth was drawn back into a querulous pucker and his hands rested limply in his lap.
“Don’t you worry, pappy. We’ll get your home back for you,” called a voice from one of the camions. The sentiment was taken up and voiced by a great number. Through the warm glow of the spirit of the crusader that it gave them, all other emotions were submerged.
Mirrors in ornate frames apparently had a special significance for the refugees. Not one of them but had carefully salvaged his mirror and was displaying it, safely bound to the bedclothing with which the cart was loaded down. Every one of the refugees seemed also to have a large feather bed, and among the property that they were carrying away from their deserted homes was often to be noticed a round glass cover under which was a wedding-cake or a carved miniature of an old-fashioned man and maid dancing a minuet.
It was night, and many of the men had gone to sleep. The camions stopped abruptly, and the awakened men, trying vainly to unlimber their stiffened muscles, laboriously made their way to the ground.
Hicks had been one of the first men to leave the camion. Now he walked around in front of it. Funny, there were no other camions before him! He ran to the rear and down the road a few paces. No camions there either.
“Hey, fellows! we’re lost.”
“Lost? And up here? What the hell are we going to do?”
“I don’t give a damn if we are lost. I need a vacation, anyway.”
“Pipe down, damn it. You can’t tell how near we are to the German lines.”