There were refugees who had seen the beginning of battles, taking
flight before the end of them. I met some from Le Cateau, who had
stared speechlessly at familiar hills over which came without warning
great forces of foreign soldiers. The English had come first, in clouds
of dust which powdered their uniforms and whitened their sun-baked
faces. They seemed in desperate hurry and scratched up mounds of
loose earth, like children building sand castles, and jumped down into
wayside ditches which they used as cover, and lay on their stomachs
in the beetroot fields. They were cheerful enough, and laughed as
they littered the countryside with beef tins, and smoked cigarettes
incessantly, as they lay scorched under the glare of the sun, with their
rifles handy. Their guns were swung round with their muzzles nosing
towards the rising ground from which these English soldiers had
come. It seemed as though they were playing games of make
believe, for the fun of the thing. The French peasants had stood
round grinning at these English boys who could not understand a
word of French, but chattered cheerfully all the time in their own
strange language. War seemed very far away. The birds were singing
in a shrill chorus.
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