We left Pont-à-Mousson imagining that our Section was in for a month's
repairing and tinkering at the military motor park, but as we came
towards B. our opinion changed. We began to pass file after file of
troops, many of them the khaki-clad _troupes d'attaque_, bull-necked
Zouaves, and wiry, fine-featured Arabs. A regiment was halted at a
crossroad; some of the men had taken off their jackets and hung them to
the cross-beam of a wayside crucifix. On the grass before it, in the
circle of shade made by the four trees which pious Meusian custom here
plants round a _Calvaire_, sprawled several powerful-looking fellows;
one lay flat on his belly with his face in his Turkish cap. Hard by, in
a little copse, the regimental kitchen was smoking and steaming away.
A hunger-breeding smell of _la soupe, la bonne soupe_, assailed our
nostrils. Quite by himself, an older man was skilfully cutting a slice
of bread with a shiny, curved knife. The rooks eddied above the bare
brown fields. Just below was a village with a great cloud of wood smoke
hanging over it.
Late in the afternoon we were assigned quarters in the barracks of B.
[Illustration: SOLDIERS OF FRANCE]