the move, in the night. Their steady tramp of feet beat on
the hard road. Their dark figures looked like an army of ghosts. Sparks
were spluttering out of the funnels of army cookers. A British soldier
in full field kit was kissing a woman in the shadow-world of an
estaminet. I passed close to them, almost touching them before I was
aware of their presence.

"Bonne chance!" said the woman. "Quand to reviens--"

"One more kiss, lassie," said the man.

"Mans comme to es gourmand, toi!"

He kissed her savagely, hungrily. Then he lurched off the sidewalk and
formed up with other men in the darkness.

The Scots Guards moved next morning. I stood by the side of the colonel,
who was in a gruff mood.

"It looks like rain," he said, sniffing the air. "It will probably rain
like hell when the battle begins."

I think he was killed somewhere by Fosse 8. The two comrades in the
Scots Guards were badly wounded. One of the young brothers was killed
and the other maimed. I found their names in the casualty lists which
filled columns of The Times for a long time after Loos.

III

The town of Bethune was the capital of our army in the Black Country of
the French coal-fields. It was not much shelled in those days, though
afterward--years afterward--it was badly damaged by long-range guns, so
that its people fled, at last, after living so long on the edge of war.

Its people were friendly to our men, and did not raise their prices
exorbitantly. There were good shops in the town--"as good as Paris,"
said soldiers who had never been to Paris, but found these plate-glass
windows dazzling, after trench life, and loved to see the "mamzelles"
behind the counters and walking out smartly, with little high-heeled
shoes. There were tea-shops, crowded always with officers on their way
to the line or just out of it, and they liked to speak French with the
girls who served them. Those girls saw the hunger in those men's eyes,
who watched every movement they made, who tried to touch their hands and
their frocks in passing. They knew they were desired, as daughters of
Eve, by boys who were starved of love. They took that as part of their
business, distributing cakes and buns without favor, with laughter
in their eyes, and a merry word or two. Now and then, when they had
leisure, they retired to inner rooms, divided by curtains from the shop,
and sat on the knees of young British officers, while others played
ragtime or sentimental b