s of thousands. A stage had been attained when one felt
nothing, knew nothing, but just the unending chorus of padding feet
guided by the mere instinct of a mind in a condition of peculiar coma.
The ten minute halts were taken at each hour with no comment. Men threw
themselves prone on the road, closed eyes, stood up unthinking at the
order and fell again into the harsh rigidity of movement.

Just before dusk the "machine" halted at Verchocq, after a march of
thirty-three kilos. They were tired, worn, hungry....

No lorries or cookers turned up that night!

Followed that abrupt revival of spirits that cannot but remain a
pyschological mystery. No cookers--no grub. They threw aside without an
effort complete exhaustion, the outcome of an entire day's strenuous
bodily exertion, sallied forth with remarkable sangfroid and certainty
in Verchocq, there conversing with the inhabitants, made themselves
thoroughly at home and gratefully partook of the hot fare hospitably
provided them--the fierce inroads upon food that only the utterly
famished can readily appreciate, and which indelibly impressed upon the
intellect of their hosts a certainty that British troops could never
have their appetite satiated.

They returned to billets in varying moods and conditions, one or two
ignoring a straight walk and zig-zagging an uncertain course across the
roads. Stumpy, who had received a generous welcome from a misguided
patriot, sat down with smug complacency, holding one hand lovingly over
an abdomen over-filled with good fare.

"Weren't 'alf orl right," he said "lawd, wot with five eggs an' 'am an'
bread; but there weren't any beer, only," with a shudder, "a 'ome-made
lemonade."

"Yus," Duquemin agreed, "dam good-hic-sort these French people. Fine
lil' daughter wi' blue-hic-eyes. 'Eld my 'and, and she hic-said was
brave-hic soldier. Ver' proud ... 'allo wot-hic-doing'."

A lad was kneeling in his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so
night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously--but had
anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked the b----
scoffer's 'ead orf."

Strange ingrained instinctive assertion of fair play predominant in the
attitude of those wild, uncouth mortals. Few of them had thought of
outward expression of God--a fierce resentment world galvanise into life
at the slightest sneer upon the unprotected back of those who HAD the
pluck. From his couch in a solitary blanket the agnos