rom the line to try to lift the car onto the
road. But even with twenty men at the towing rope it refused to move.
The men were obliged to give it up and run on to catch their
companies.

Between the _fusees_ the curious shuffling of feet and a deeper shadow
were all that told of the passage of these troops. It was so dark that
one could see no faces. But here and there one saw the light of a
cigarette. The mere hardship of walking for miles along those roads,
paved with round stones and covered with mud on which their feet
slipped continually, must have been a great one, and agonizing for
feet that had been frosted in the water of the trenches.

Afterward I inquired what these men carried. They loomed up out of the
night like pack horses. I found that each soldier carried, in addition
to his rifle and bayonet, a large knapsack, a canteen, a cartridge
pouch, a brown haversack containing tobacco, soap, towel and food, a
billy-can and a rolled blanket.

German batteries were firing intermittently as we stood there. The
rain poured down. I had dressed to go out to tea and wore my one and
only good hat. I did the only thing that seemed possible--I took off
that hat and put it in the automobile and let the rain fall on my
unprotected head. The hat had to see me through the campaign, and my
hair would stand water.

At last an armoured car came along and pulled the automobile onto the
road. But after a progress of only ten feet it lapsed again, and there
remained.

The situation was now acute. It was impossible to go back, and to go
ahead meant to advance on foot along roads crowded with silent
soldiers--meant going forward, too, in a pouring rain and in
high-heeled shoes. For that was another idiocy I had committed.

We started on, leaving the apologetic chauffeur by the car. A few feet
and the road, curving to the right, began to near the German line.
Every now and then it was necessary to call sharply to the troops, or
struggling along through the rain they would have crowded us off
knee-deep into the mud.

"_Attention!"_ the officer would call sharply. And for a time we would
have foot room. There were no more horses, no more guns--only men,
men, men. Some of them had taken off their outer coats and put them
shawl-fashion over their heads. But most of them walked stolidly on,
already too wet and wretched to mind the rain.

The fog had lifted. It was possible to see that sinister red streak
that follows the firin