* * * * *

“And that,” said the Captain, “is where we are at present.”

“They’ll turn on us in a day or two, and then there’ll be the devil of a fight,” said the Senior Subaltern.

Everybody laughed at him, but they had an uneasy feeling that he would be right.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST ADVANCE

While he was dreaming, the time slipped by almost unnoticed.  It was not until eleven o’clock that a halt was made.  He could just discern in the darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house, surrounded by barns and outhouses.  Some transport had got jammed in the yard.  He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and shouts.  There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and were longing for any cover out of the wet.  Sounds of shuffling were heard in front, and at last they found themselves on the move again.  Another fifty yards, as far as a gate in a wall, and then they stuck again.  More weary, exasperating minutes; then at last the bedraggled figure of the Captain loomed out of the darkness.

“Is that you?” he asked.

“All right, lead round here!”

He led them to a large barn, and they turned in to sleep just as they were.  No supper, not a fire to dry their sodden clothes, not a blanket to cover their chilled bodies.

As usual, they got to sleep somehow, and as usual dawn came about thirty hours before they were ready for it.

They moved out immediately, and continued the course of the march.  The rain-laden clouds had rolled completely away.  The sky looked hard and was scarcely blue; the country was swept by a strong nipping wind, for which they were very thankful, since it served to dry their clothes.

The Machine-gun Officer, passing down the Battalion, walked with them while he told them two wonderful stories.  It may have been crude, but in another way it was almost as satisfying as breakfast.

He solemnly explained to them that the war was nearly over.  The Germans, lured into making this tremendous and unnecessary effort to capture Paris, had left their eastern front dangerously weak.  The Russians were pouring into Germany in their millions.  The Cossacks were already around Posen.  Nobody quite knew where Posen was, but it sounded deliciously like Potsdam.  Anyway, they would be there in a month.

A few surplus millions, who, presumably on account of the crush, could not burst into Germany by the quickest route, had been despatched, via Archangel, to the northern coast of Scotland.  Their progress thenceforwards is, of course, notorious.  By now they had safely landed at Antwerp, and had pursued a career that must have bored them as monotonously victorious.  Namur, “and all those places” had been captured, and at that moment Maubeuge was being relieved.  The Germans were being sandwiched between the victorious Russian, French and British Arms.  They could only escape as through the neck of a bottle.  And the end of the war was so near, and so definite, that it almost lacked interest.