All along the way, coming and going, tearing to meet us, or leaving us
behind, splashed with gray mud after a night of rain, motor-lorries
sped. They carried munitions or food to the front, or brought back tired
soldiers bound for a place of rest, and their roofs were marvellously
"camouflaged" in a blend of blue and green paint splotched with red. For
aeroplanes they must have looked, in their processions, like drifting
mist over meadowland. Shooting in and out among them, like slim gray
swordfish in a school of porpoise, were military cars crowded with smart
officers who saluted the lieutenant escorting us, and stared in surprise
at sight of a woman. A sprinkling of these officers were Americans, and
they would have astonished us more than we astonished them had we not
known that we should see Americans. They were to be, indeed, the
"feature" of the great show; and though Mr. Beckett was calm in manner
to match the Front, I knew from his face that he was deeply moved by the
thought of seeing "boys from home" fighting for France as his dead son
had fought.
At each small village we saw soldiers who had been sent to the "back of
the Front" for a few days' change from the trenches. They lounged on
long wooden benches before humble houses where they had _logement_; they
sat at tables borrowed from kitchens, earnestly engaged at dominoes or
_manille_, or they played _boules_ in narrow grass alleys beside the
muddy road.
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