The car stopped again.  We had made another leg of the journey.  And this time our destination was a church.  We were close behind the trenches now and our movements were made with extreme caution.  Captain F——­ piloted me through the mud.

“We will go quietly,” he said.  “Many of them are doubtless sleeping; they are but just out of the trenches and very tired.”

Now and then one encounters in this war a picture that cannot be painted.  Such a picture is that little church just behind the Belgian lines at L——.  There are no pews, of course, in Continental churches.  The chairs had been piled up in a corner near the altar, and on the stone floor thus left vacant had been spread quantities of straw.  Lying on the straw and covered by their overcoats were perhaps two hundred Belgian soldiers.  They lay huddled close together for warmth; the mud of the trenches still clung to them.  The air was heavy with the odour of damp straw.

The high vaulted room was a cave of darkness.  The only lights were small flat candles here and there, stuck in saucers or on haversacks just above the straw.  These low lights, so close to the floor, fell on the weary faces of sleeping men, accentuating the shadows, bringing pinched nostrils into relief, showing lines of utter fatigue and exhaustion.

But the picture was not all sombre.  Here were four men playing cards under an image of Our Lady, which was just overhead.  They were muffled against the cold and speaking in whispers.  In a far corner a soldier sat alone, cross-legged, writing by the light of a candle.  His letter rested on a flat loaf of bread, which was his writing table.  Another soldier had taken a loaf of bread for his pillow and was comfortably asleep on it.

Captain F——­ led the way through the church.  He stepped over the men carefully.  When they roused and looked up they would have risen to salute, but he told them to lie still.

It was clear that the relationship between the Belgian officers and their troops was most friendly.  Not only in that little church at midnight, but again and again I have seen the same thing.  The officers call their men their “little soldiers,” and eye them with affection.

One boy insisted on rising and saluting.  He was very young, and on his chin was the straggly beard of his years.  The Captain stooped, and lifting a candle held it to his face.

“The handsomest beard in the Belgian Army!” he said, and the men round chuckled.

And so it went, a word here, a nod there, an apology when we disturbed one of the sleepers.

“They are but boys,” said the Captain, and sighed.  For each day there were fewer of them who returned to the little church to sleep.

On the way back to the car, making our way by means of the Captain’s electric flash through the crowded graveyard, he turned to me.

“When you write of this, madame,” he said, “you will please not mention the location of this church.  So far it has escaped—­perhaps because it is small.  But the churches always suffer.”