rumbling miles away to our right and left. We awaited developments with
the greatest impatience, for we knew that this general bombardment was
but a preliminary one for the purpose of concealing, until the last
moment, the plan of attack, the portion of the front where the great
artillery concentration would be made and the infantry assault pushed
home. Then came sudden orders to move. Within twenty-four hours the roads
were filled with the incoming troops of a new division. We made a rapid
march to a rail-head, entrained, and were soon moving southward by an
indirect route; southward, toward the sound of the guns, to take an
inconspicuous part in the battle at Loos.

CHAPTER X

NEW LODGINGS

I. MOVING IN

We were wet and tired and cold and hungry, for we had left the train
miles back of the firing-line and had been marching through the rain
since early morning; but, as the sergeant said, "A bloke standin' by the
side o' the road, watchin' this 'ere column pass, would think we was
a-go'n' to a Sunday-school picnic." The roads were filled with endless
processions of singing, shouting soldiers. Seen from a distance the long
columns gave the appearance of imposing strength. One thought of them as
battalions, brigades, divisions, cohesive parts of a great fighting
machine. But when our lines of march crossed, when we halted to make way
for each other, what an absorbing pageant of personality! Each rank was a
series of intimate pictures. Everywhere there was laughing, singing, a
merry minstrelsy of mouth-organs.

The jollity in my own part of the line was doubtless a picture in little
of what was happening elsewhere. We were anticipating the exciting times
just at hand. Mac, who was blown to pieces by a shell a few hours later,
was dancing in and out of the ranks singing,--

"Oh! Won't it be joyful!
Oh! Won't it be joyful!"

Preston, who was killed at the same time, threw his rifle in the air and
caught it again in sheer excess of animal spirits. Three rollicking lads,
all of whom we buried during the week in the same shell hole under the
same wooden cross, stumbled with an exaggerated show of utter weariness
singing,--

"We never knew till now how muddy mud is,
We never knew how muddy mud could be."

And little Charley Harrison, who had fibbed bravely about his age to the
recruiting officers, trudged contentedly along, his rifle sl