ters....

I shared Captain Burnett's lunch, and later went to fetch some men from
a bridge that we had blown up. It seemed to me at the time that the
bridge had been blown up very badly. As a matter of fact, German
infantry crossed it four hours after I had left it.

We had "the wind up" that afternoon. It appears that a patrol of six
Uhlans had either been cut off or had somehow got across the river at
Meaux. Anyway, they rode past an unsuspecting sleepy outpost of ours,
and spread alarm through the division. Either the division was panicky
or the report had become exaggerated on the way to H.Q. Batteries were
put into position on the Meaux road, and there was a general liveliness.

I got back from a hard but unexciting day's work with the Cyclists to
find that the Germans had got across in very fact, though not at Meaux,
and that we were going to do a further bunk that night. We cursed the
gentle Germans heartily and well. About 10.30 the three of us who were
going on started. We found some convoys on the way, delivered messages,
and then I, who was leading, got badly lost in the big Villeneuve
forest--I forgot the name of it at the moment.[12] Of course I pretended
that we were taking the shortest road, and luck, which is always with me
when I've got to find anything, didn't desert me that night.

At dead of night we echoed into the Chateau at Tournan, roused some
servants, and made them get us some bread, fruit, and mattresses. The
bread and fruit we devoured, together with a lunch-tongue, from that
excellent Chateau at La Haute Maison--the mattresses we took into a
large airy room and slept on, until we were wakened by the peevish
tones of the other motor-cyclists who had ridden with the column. One of
them had fallen asleep on his bicycle and disappeared into a ditch, but
the other two were so sleepy they did not hear him. We were all weary
and bad-tempered, while a hot dusty day, and a rapid succession of
little routine messages, did not greatly cheer us.

At Tournan, appropriately, we turned. We were only a few miles S.-E. of
Paris. The Germans never got farther than Lagny. There they came into
touch with our outposts, so the tactful French are going to raise a
monument to Jeanne d'Arc--a reminder, I suppose, that even we and they
committed atrocities sometime.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] I do not know who the officer was, and I give the story as I wrote
it in a letter home--for what it is worth.

[9] It must have