That night, too, somewhere behind the French lines, a man of very different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History.  He knew that the enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases.  He knew that as long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now completely mobilised reinforcements.  Moreover, the army that had hurried pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.

Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things.  He and his men were past caring.  Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of dull apathy.  He felt he would not have cared whatever happened.  The finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to insensibility.  With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and seemed to make his blood boil and seethe, he seemed to be degenerating into the state of mind commonly attributed to the dumb beasts of the field—­indifferent to everything in the wide world except food and sleep.

That night a draft commanded by one Subaltern arrived to fill up the gaps.

The next day the retreat continued.  The men’s nerves were tried to breaking-point, and a little detail, small and of no consequence in itself, opened the lock, as it were, to a perfect river of growing anger and discontent.

This was how it happened.  The Colonel had repeated the previous night the order about looting, and the men were under the impression that if any of them took so much as a green apple he would be liable to “death or some such less punishment as the Act shall provide.”  They talk about it and grumble, and then suddenly, without any warning except a clucking and scratching, the Mess Sergeant is seen by the greater part of the Battalion to issue triumphantly from a farm gate with two or three fat hens under his arms.  Smiling broadly, totally ignorant of the enormity of his conduct, he deposits his load in the mess-cart drawn up to receive the loot!

The men did not let the opportunity slip by without giving vent to a lot of criticism.

The Subaltern’s ears tingled at the remarks that he heard.  Never in his life had he felt so ridiculous.