The hourly halts were decreased from ten to about three minutes. The excitement of the future dissolved the accumulating fatigue of the three days. The very weight of his sword and haversack was forgotten.
It was Sunday morning. The bells of the village churches were ringing, and the women and children, decked in their Sunday best, were going calmly to church, just as if the greatest battle that, up to then, history had ever seen were not about to be fought around their very homesteads.
A waterworks was passed, and at last the crossroads were reached. There was a wait while the Battalion in front of them deployed. Officers were loading their revolvers, the men charging their magazines. One Company left as advanced guard, and very soon the Battalion was on its way to its appointed sector of the battlefield.
They threw aside a hastily improvised barricade of ploughshares, and hurried on to the little village which was to be their especial care in the impending battle, known rather inadequately as "Mons."
CHAPTER IV
MONS
Then came the village of Harmigné—just a few cottages on either side of the road, and soon the companies debouched from the village to take up the positions allotted to them.
In war it is well known that he who sees most is likely to take least away. It was not the soldier's duty to gaze about him to see what was happening. He must enlarge his bit of trench, and be ready to meet the enemy when he himself is attacked. Therefore, if you ask a veteran of Mons about the battle, all he will be able to tell you as likely as not is, "Marching, and digging, and then marching mostly, sir."
The Company on the left was astride a railway embankment in front of a large mine. The Subaltern's Company was directly in front of the village itself; another Company to the right, the fourth in local reserve. The work of entrenchment began immediately. There was not time to construct a trench, as laid down in the Manual of Field Engineering. Each man had to scrape with his entrenching tool as big a hole as he could before the enemy came upon him.