Some of the French officers, tramping by the side of their men, shouted through the swish of the gale: 

“Courage, mes petits!”

“II fait mauvais temps pour les sales Boches!”

In cottage parlours near the fighting lines—­that is to say in the zone of fire, which covered many villages and farmsteads, French doctors, buttoned up to the chin in leather coats, bent over the newest batches of wounded.

“Shut that door!  Sacred name of a dog; keep the door shut!  Do you want the gale to blow us up the chimney?”

But it was necessary to open the door to bring in another stretcher where a man lay still.

“Pardon, mon capitaine,” said one of the stretcher-bearers, as the door banged to, with a frightful clap.

Yesterday the enemy reoccupied Dixmude.

So said the official bulletin, with its incomparable brevity of eloquence.

26

For a time, during this last month in the first year of the war, I made my headquarters at Dunkirk, where without stirring from the town there was always a little excitement to be had.  Almost every day, for instance, a German aeroplane—­one of the famous Taube flock—­ would come and drop bombs by the Town Hall or the harbour, killing a woman or two and a child, or breaking many panes of glass, but never destroying anything of military importance (for women and children are of no importance in time of war), although down by the docks there were rich stores of ammunition, petrol, and material of every kind.  These birds of death came so regularly in the afternoon that the Dunquerquoises, who love a jest, even though it is a bloody one, instead of saying “Trois heures et demie,” used to say, “Taube et demie” and know the time.

There was a window in Dunkirk which looked upon the chief square.  In the centre of the square is the statue of Jean-Bart, the famous captain and pirate of the seventeenth century, standing in his sea-boots (as he once strode into the presence of the Sun-King) and with his sword raised above his great plumed hat.  I stood in the balcony of the window looking down at the colour and movement of the life below, and thinking at odd moments—­the thought always thrust beneath the surface of one’s musings—­of the unceasing slaughter of the war not very far away across the Belgian frontier.  All these people here in the square were in some way busy with the business of death.  They were crossing these flagged stones on the way to the shambles, or coming back from the shell-stricken towns, la bas, as the place of blood is called, or taking out new loads of food for guns and men, or bringing in reports to admirals and the staff, or going to churches to pray for men who have done these jobs before, and now, perhaps, lie still, out of it.