..
But the roads were encumbered and the traffic of war was surging
forward ceaselessly in a muddled, confused, aimless sort of way, as it
seemed to me, before I knew the system and saw the working of the
brain behind it all. A long train of carts without horses stood, shafts
down, on the muddy side of the road. Little blue and red flags
fluttered above them. A group of soldiers were lounging in their
neighbourhood, waiting, it seems, for something to turn up. Perhaps
that something was a distant train which came with a long trail of
smoke across the distant marshlands.
At the railway crossing there was a great park of motor lorries. They,
too, seemed to be waiting for new loads. Obviously this was one of
the "railheads" about which I had a lecture that morning from a
distinguished officer, who thinks in railheads and refilling stations and
other details of transport upon which the armies in the field depend
for their food and ammunition. Without that explanation all these
roadside halts, all these stationary lorries and forage carts would
have seemed like a temporary stagnation in the business of war, with
nothing doing.
A thrill comes to every one when he sees bodies of British troops
moving along the roads.
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