September 2.

The Colonel seemed (from a telegram he sent yesterday morning) to be in a great hurry for me to come down to the other squadron.  So I decided to go by train, and send Hunt with the horses.  And this is the train journey.

The station at ——­ quite recovered and tidy after a feeble strafing the other day.  Even two or three civilians travelling.  Not many of the military—­a hundred or so, perhaps, all waiting and smoking idly, each armed with his “Movement Order.”  The dull boom of guns not excessive, though there’s a frequent “plom! plom! plom!” of the Archies, and the sky is dotted with clusters of pretty little shrapnel clouds.  Sometimes the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue.  It makes you feel slightly homesick.  I don’t quite know why.  That sort of thing isn’t done at home.

[Sidenote:  THROUGH HAZEBROUCK]

In comes the train.  The French station officials all in a paroxysm of excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to run over.  Up we clamber.  Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth, and retires to a “third,” while I feel a beast lounging in this luxurious “first.”  Off we go, and I look out at all the familiar country.

There’s one of those quaint French notices in the carriage: 

    TAISEZ-VOUS! 
    MEFIEZ-VOUS! 
    LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS ECOUTENT!

All too necessary, they tell me.

Later.—­It is getting dark.  We stop at a large town that I know well.  Two hours to wait.  I turn in to a Follies show.  There is usually one going on, run by this or that division, all soldiers, but looking very odd in their paint and ruffles.  But what a curious concert.  The first I’ve seen out here.  The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep.  You know?  However, they love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.

Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey, who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain.  Delightful talking over old times.

Later.—­Into the train again.  On the platform beforehand I meet a gunner subaltern.  We talk.  He’s very well read, and interested in lots of the things I love so much.  We discuss the war.  He knows a lot of the billets I know.  Evidently we have nearly met out here often before.  What is that book he is reading?  Richard Jefferies?  From Jefferies to Maeterlinck.  What has become of him?  War so foreign to that mystic mind.  Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it still exists at all.  We talk for about two hours.  Then he gets out at ——.  I don’t know what his name is, and very likely I won’t ever meet him again.  But out here one makes friends quickly.  There are so many of us all in the same boat.