When within sound of the German guns he was arrested for the eighth time and sent to Amiens escorted by two gendarmes, who were ordered to see him aboard the first train for Boulogne.  They evidently considered that they had followed instructions when they saw him buy a through ticket for London.  Shortly after midnight a train loaded with wounded pulled into the station.  Assisted by some British soldiers, Thompson scrambled to the top of a train standing at the next platform and made a flashlight picture.  A wild panic ensued in the crowded station.  It was thought that a German bomb had exploded.  Thompson was pulled down by the police and would have been roughly handled had it not been for the interference of his British friends, who said that he belonged to their regiment.  Shortly afterwards a train loaded with artillery which was being rushed to the front came in.  Thompson, once more aided and abetted by the British Tommies, slipped under the tarpaulin covering a field-gun and promptly fell asleep.  When he awoke the next morning he was at Mons. A regiment of Highlanders was passing.  He exchanged a cake of chocolate for a fatigue-cap and fell in with them.  After marching for two hours the regiment was ordered into the trenches.  Thompson went into the trenches too.  All through that terrible day Thompson plied his trade as the soldiers plied theirs.  They used their rifles and he used his camera.  Men were shot dead on either side of him.  A storm of shrapnel shrieked and howled overhead.  He said that the fire of the German artillery was amazingly accurate and rapid.  They would concentrate their entire fire on a single regiment or battery and when that regiment or battery was out of action they would turn to another and do the same thing over again.  When the British fell back before the German onset Thompson remained in the trenches long enough to get pictures of the charging Germans.  Then he ran for his life.

That night he bivouacked with a French line regiment, the men giving him food and a blanket.  The next morning he set out for Amiens en route for England.  As the train for Boulogne, packed to the doors with refugees, was pulling out of the Amiens station, he noticed a first-class compartment marked “Reserved,” the only occupant being a smartly gowned young woman.  Thompson said that she was very good-looking.  The train was moving, but Thompson took a running jump and dived head-foremost through the window, landing in the lady’s lap.  She was considerably startled until he said that he was an American.  That seemed to explain everything.  The young woman proved to be a Russian countesss who had been living in Paris and who was returning, via England, to Petrograd.  The French Government had placed a compartment at her disposal, but in the jam at the Paris station she had become separated from her maid, who had the bag containing her money.  Thompson recounted his adventures at Mons and asked her if she would smuggle his films into England concealed on her