All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches.  The country had the delicacy of one of Corot’s landscapes, and the skies were of that unforgettable blue which is the secret of France.  The end of my journey found me at No. ——­ General Hospital.  The chaplain, an old C.F. attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents.  They wore the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter’s overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with red ties tied in a sailor’s knot.  The badges on their caps alone betrayed their regiments.  There were “details” from almost every regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End.  Their talk was of the great retreat.

“Hell it was—­fire and brimstone,” said a R.F.A. man.  “We limbered up, our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were more like a blooming ambulance than a battery.  We had our limbers and waggons chock full o’ details—­fellers who’d been wounded or crocked up.  And reservists wi’ sore feet—­out o’ training, I reckon,” he added magisterially.

“Never you mind about resarvists, my son,” interjected a man in the Suffolks.  “We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for miles.  We ain’t no chickens.”

“No, that we bain’t,” said a West-countryman.  “I reckon we can teach them young fellers zummat.  Oi zeed zome on ’em pretty clytenish[13] when they was under foire the fust time.  Though they were middlin’ steady, arterwards,” he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his regiment.

“’Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up.  I niver a zeed anything loike it afore.  Wimmen an’ childer a-runnin’ in and out among us like poultry; we could’n keep sections o’ fours nohow.  We carried some o’ the little ‘uns.  And girt fires a-burnin’ at night loike ricks—­a terrible blissey[15] on the hills.  And ’twere that dusty and hot oi did get mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle; I’d gied it all to the childer.”

“What about rations?” said the chaplain.

“Oh I were bit leery[16] i’ my innerds at toimes, but oi had my emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;[17] they kep up wi’ us most times.  ’Twere just loike a circus procession—­lorries and guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up.  And some of the harses went cruel lame and had to be left behind.”

“That they did,” said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously a Londoner.  He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate gait of the cavalryman on his feet.  “Me ’orse got the blooming ’ump with corns.”

“Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?”

He sniffed.  “Rotten, sir!  They never gives us a chawnce.  They ain’t no good except for lootin’.  Regular ’ooligans.  We charged ’em up near Mons, our orficer goin’ ahead ’bout eight yards, and when we got up to ’em ’e drops back into our line.  We charges in a single line, you know, knee to knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as small a target as we can.”