The soldier at Malplaquet shook the powder from his wig, and grumbled as only a soldier and a Britain can.

His descendant at Mons did just the same thing.  And after he had got his “grouse” off his chest, fought all the better for it.

Although an alarming rumour reached them that the enemy, crowded into motor buses, had already reached St. Quentin, nothing disturbed their rest during the night, and by dawn the column was swinging along the road to La Fere.  The men were always depressed and weary in the early morning.  Their spirits never began to rise until eight or nine o’clock.  Then songs would break out.  “Who were you with last night?” “Hold your hand out, naughty boy!” and the inevitable “Tipperary,” were the favourites.  They would often whistle the “Marseillaise.”  A certain “swing” entered into the marching; there was less changing step, less shuffling.  Even their weary faces brightened.  Jokes became positively prolific, and the wit of the barrack-room, considered as wit, is far funnier than the humour of the Mess.  Perhaps it is founded on a deeper knowledge of life.

Towards midday, almost imperceptibly, the gist of the songs changed to the sentimental, and before very long the heat and fatigue gradually overcame the men, and songs ceased altogether.  As a general rule, after two o’clock the mental attitude of the troops might be described as black, distinctly black.

The rumour ran down the column that La Fere was to be the termination of that day’s march, and as La Fere was only a matter of ten miles away, it was felt that at last an “easy” day had arrived.  The road led through very pleasant places along a river valley, the opposite slope of which was wooded.  That morning, too, there was no suspicion of artillery fire.  It seemed that, for the moment at any rate, they had escaped the inconvenience of battle.  Somebody said that La Fere was fortified.  Behind its works they would doubtless stand, rest, and then perhaps fight. (Even yet they had not learnt the futility of speculation.)

Those ten miles were long ones.  It almost seemed to their tantalised nerves that La Fere was not a town, but a mirage.  And so it was, or at least their thoughts of rest and water and food remained “in nebulis.”

Outside the town was a road-crossing.  One way led to the main street of the town, and the other way to the south.  To the consternation and amazement of everybody, the khaki ribbon crept, not towards the houses, but seemed for a dreadful moment to hesitate, to wobble, then turned its head slowly and irrevocably away from the town.  The men swore.  They felt that they were a scale on the skin of a long, sombre, khaki serpent, whose head had acted contrary to the wishes of its belly.  And the body of the serpent quivered with indignation.  The Subaltern himself felt that he had been cheated, lured on by false pretences, and generally treated shamefully.  He knew perfectly