“Now, now; give the gentlemen their beer.”

I bought some cherry brandy and came away.

I was sent on a couple of messages that afternoon:  one to trace a telephone wire to a deserted station with nothing in it but a sack of excellent potatoes, another to an officer whom I could not find.  I waited under a tree eating somebody else’s pears until I was told he had gone mad, and was wandering aimlessly about.

It was a famous night for me.  I was sent off to Dammartin, and knew something would go wrong.  It did.  A sentry all but shot me.  I nearly rode into an unguarded trench across the road, and when I started back with my receipt my bicycle would not fire.  I found that the mechanic at Dammartin had filled my tank with water.  It took me two hours, two lurid hours, to take that water out.  It was three in the morning when I got going.  I was badly frightened the Division had gone on, because I hadn’t the remotest conception where it was going to.  When I got back H.Q. were still at Vinantes.  I retired thankfully to my bed under the stars, listening dreamily to Grimers, who related how a sentry had fired at him, and how one bullet had singed the back of his neck.

We left Vinantes not too early after breakfast,—­a comfort, as we had all of us been up pretty well the whole night.  Grimers was still upset at having been shot at by sentries.  I had been going hard, and had had only a couple of hours’ sleep.  We rode on in advance of the company.  It was very hot and dusty, and when we arrived at Crecy with several hours to spare, we first had a most excellent omelette and then a shave, a hair-cut, and a wash.  Crecy was populous and excited.  It made us joyous to think we had reached a part of the country where the shops were open, people pursuing their own business, where there was no dumbly reproaching glance for us in our retreat.

We had been told that our H.Q. that night were going to be at the chateau of a little village called La Haute Maison.  Three of us arrived there and found the caretaker just leaving.  We obtained the key, and when he had gone did a little bit of looting on our own.  First we had a great meal of lunch-tongue, bread, wine, and stewed pears.  Then we carefully took half a dozen bottles of champagne and hid them, together with some other food-stuffs, in the middle of a big bed of nettles.  A miscellaneous crowd of cows were wandering round the house lowing pitifully.

We were just about to make a heroic effort at milking when the 3rd Div. billeting officer arrived and told us that the 5th Div.  H.Q. would be that night at Bouleurs, farther back.  We managed to carry off the food-stuffs, but the champagne is probably still in the nettles.  And the bottles are standing up too.

We found the company encamped in a schoolhouse, our fat signal-sergeant doing dominie at the desk.  I made himself a comfortable sleeping-place with straw, then went out on the road to watch the refugees pass.