The soldiers in their pale-blue uniforms were young, lively, high-spirited, and very dusty; their moustaches, hair, and ears were noticeably coated with dust.  Evidently they had been travelling for hours.  The auto-buses kept appearing out of the sun-shot dust-cloud at the end of the town, and disappearing round the curve by the Town Hall.  Occasionally an officer’s automobile, or a car with a couple of nurses, would intervene momentarily; and then more and more and more auto-buses, and still more.  The impression given is that the entire French Army is passing through the town.  The rattle and the throbbing and the shaking get on my nerves.  At last come two breakdown-vans, and the procession is finished.  I cannot believe that it is really finished, but it is; and the silence is incredible.

Well, I have seen only a couple of regiments go by.  Out of the hundreds of regiments in the French Army, just two!  But whence they had come, what they had done, whither they were travelling, what they were intended to do—­nobody could tell me.  They had an air as casual and vague and aimless as a flight of birds across a landscape.

There were more picturesque pilgrimages than that.  One of the most picturesque and touching spectacles I saw at the front was the march of a regiment of the line into another little country town on a very fine summer morning.  First came the regimental band.  The brass instruments were tarnished; the musicians had all sorts of paper packages tied to their knapsacks.  Besides being musicians they were real soldiers, in war-stained uniforms.  They marched with an air of fatigue.  But the tune they played was bright enough.  Followed some cyclists, keeping pace with the marchers.  Then an officer on a horse.  Then companies of the regiment.  The stocks of many of the rifles were wrapped in dirty rags.  Every man carried all that was his in the campaign, including a pair of field-glasses.  Every man was piled up with impedimenta—­broken, torn, soiled and cobbled impedimenta.  And every man was very, very tired.

A young officer on foot could scarcely walk.  He moved in a kind of trance, and each step was difficult.  He may have been half asleep.  At intervals a triangular sign was borne aloft—­red, blue, or some other tint.  These signs indicated the positions of the different companies in the trenches. (Needless to say that the regiment had come during the night from a long spell of the trenches—­but what trenches?) Then came the gorgeous regimental colours, and every soldier in the street saluted them, and every civilian raised his hat.