We did not form one column again.  We went off at intervals, by batteries; and the reason of this was soon clear, for on getting to a place where four roads met, some took one and some took another, the object being to split up the unwieldy train of thirty-six guns, with all their waggons and forges, into a number of smaller groups, marching by ways more or less parallel towards the same goal; and my battery was left separate, and went at last along a lane that ran through pasture land in a valley.

The villages were already awake, and the mist was all but lifted from the meadows when we heard men singing in chorus in front of us some way off.  These were the gunners that had left long before us and had gone on forward afoot.  For in the French artillery it is a maxim (for all I know, common to all others—­if other artilleries are wise) that you should weight your limber (and therefore your horses) with useful things alone; and as gunners are useful only to fire guns, they are not carried, save into action or when some great rapidity of movement is desired.  I do, indeed, remember one case when it was thought necessary to send a group of batteries during the manoeuvres right over from the left to the right of a very long position which our division was occupying on the crest of the Argonne.  There was the greatest need for haste, and we packed the gunners on to the limber (there were no seats on the gun in the old type—­there are now) and galloped all the way down the road, and put the guns in action with the horses still panting and exhausted by that extra weight carried at such a speed and for such a distance.  But on the march, I say again, we send the gunners forward, and not only the gunners, but as you shall hear when we come to Commercy, a reserve of drivers also.  We send them forward an hour or two before the guns start; we catch them up with the guns on the road; they file up to let us pass, and commonly salute us by way of formality and ceremony.  Then they come into the town of the halt an hour or two after we have reached it.

So here in this silent and delightful valley, through which ran a river, which may have been the Meuse or may have been a tributary only, we caught up our gunners.  Their song ceased, they were lined up along the road, and not till we were passed were they given a little halt and repose.  But when we had gone past with a huge clattering and dust, the bombardier of my piece, who was a very kindly man, a young farmer, and who happened to be riding abreast of my horses, pointed them out to me behind us at a turning in the road.  They were taking that five minutes’ rest which the French have borrowed from the Germans, and which comes at the end of every hour on the march.  They had thrown down their knapsacks and were lying flat taking their ease, I could not long look backwards, but a very little time after, when we had already gained nearly half a mile upon them, we again heard the noise of their singing, and knew that they had reshouldered their heavy packs.  And this pack is the same in every unmounted branch of the service, and is the heaviest thing, I believe, that has been carried by infantry since the Romans.