Half of us at a time slipped away and fed in stinking taverns--but the
food was good.

I cannot remember a hotter day, and we were marching through a
thickly-populated mining district--the villages were uncomfortably like
those round Dour. The people were enthusiastic and generous with their
fruit and with their chocolate. It was very tiring work, because we were
compelled to ride with the Staff, for first one of us was needed and
then another to take messages up and down the column or across country
to brigades and divisions that were advancing along roads parallel to
ours. The old Division was making barely one mile an hour. The road was
blocked by French transport coming in the opposite direction, by 'buses
drawn up at the side of the road, and by cavalry that, trekking from the
Aisne, crossed our front continuously to take up their position away on
the left.

At last, about three o'clock in the afternoon, we reached the outskirts
of Béthune. The sound of the guns was very near, and to the east of the
town we could see an aeroplane haloed in bursting shrapnel.

The Staff took refuge first in an unsavoury field and afterwards in a
little house. Despatch after despatch until evening--and then, ordered
to remain behind to direct others, and cheered by the sight of our most
revered and most short-sighted staff-officer walking straight over a
little bridge into a deep, muddy, and stinking ditch, I took refuge in
the kitchen and experienced the discreeter pleasures of "the Force." The
handmaidens brought coffee, and brushed me and washed me and talked to
me. I was sorry when the time came for me to resume my beat, or rather
to ride with Cecil after the Division.