ing
takes the heart out of a man like having to plod over again the very way
he has just come. So, when we had come to a very small village in the
waste and halted there, finding our guns and drivers already long
arrived, we made an end of a dull and meaningless day--very difficult to
tell of, because the story is merely a record of fatigue. But in a diary
of route everything must be set down faithfully; and so I have set down
all this sodden and empty day.

That night I sat at a peasant's table and heard my four
stable-companions understanding everything, and evidently in their world
and at home, although they were conscripts. This turned me silent, and I
sat away from the light, looking at the fire and drying myself by its
logs. As I heard their laughter I remembered Sussex and the woods above
Arun, and I felt myself to be in exile. Then we slept in beds, and the
goodwife had our tunics dry by morning, for she also had a son in the
service, who was a long way off at Lyons, and was not to return for two
years.

* * * * *

There are days in a long march when a man is made to do too much, and
others when he is made to do what seems meaningless, doubling backward
on his road, as we had done; there are days when he seems to advance
very little; but they are not days of repose, for they are full of
halting and doubts and special bits of work. Such a day had come to us
with the next dawn.

The reason of all these things--I mean, of the over-long marches, of the
counter-marches, and of the short days--was the complexity of the only
plan by which a great number of men and guns can be taken from one large
place to another without confusion by the way--living, as they must do,
upon the country, and finding at the end of every march water and hay
for the horses, food and some kind of shelter for the men. And this
plan, as I have said before, consists (in a European country) in
dividing your force, marching by roads more or less parallel, and
converging, after some days, on the object of the march.

It is evident that in a somewhat desolate region of small and distant
hamlets the front will be broader and the columns smaller, but when a
large town stands in the line of march, advantage will be taken of it to
mass one's men.

Such a town was Bar-le-Duc, and it was because our battery was so near
to it that this fourth day was a short march of less than eight miles.

They sent the gunners in e