There was a group of officers seated by the road, and as I passed I wished them good morning and they said good morning in return.  I had gone a hundred feet when one of them galloped after me and asked to look at my papers.  With relief I gave them to him.  I was sure now I would be told to return to Brussels.  I calculated if at Hal I had luck in finding a taxicab, by lunch time I should be in the Palace Hotel.

“I think,” said the officer, “you had better see our general.  He is ahead of us.”

I thought he meant a few hundred yards ahead, and to be ordered back by a general seemed more convincing than to be returned by a mere captain.  So I started to walk on beside the mounted officers.  This, as it seemed to presume equality with them, scandalized them greatly, and I was ordered into the ranks.  But the one who had arrested me thought I was entitled to a higher rating and placed me with the color-guard, who objected to my presence so violently that a long discussion followed, which ended with my being ranked below a second lieutenant and above a sergeant.  Between one of each of these I was definitely placed, and for five hours I remained definitely placed.  We advanced with a rush that showed me I had surprised a surprise movement.  The fact was of interest not because I had discovered one of their secrets, but because to keep up with the column I was forced for five hours to move at what was a steady trot.  It was not so fast as the running step of the Italian bersagliere, but as fast as our “double-quick.”  The men did not bend the knees, but, keeping the legs straight, shot them forward with a quick, sliding movement, like men skating or skiing.  The toe of one boot seemed always tripping on the heel of the other.  As the road was paved with roughly hewn blocks of Belgian granite this kind of going was very strenuous, and had I not been in good shape I could not have kept up.  As it was, at the end of the five hours I had lost fifteen pounds, which did not help me, as during the same time the knapsack had taken on a hundred.  For two days the men in the ranks had been rushed forward at this unnatural gait and were moving like automatons.  Many of them fell by the wayside, but they were not permitted to lie there.  Instead of summoning the ambulance, they were lifted to their feet and flung back into the ranks.  Many of them were moving in their sleep, in that partly comatose state in which you have seen men during the last hours of a six days’ walking match.  Their rules, so the sergeant said, were to halt every hour and then for ten minutes rest.  But that rule is probably only for route marching.