At B. we found an English Section that had been as suddenly displaced
as our own. Every minute loaded _camions_ ground into town and
disappeared towards the east, troops of all kinds came in, _flick,
flack_, the sun shining on the barrels of the _lebels_, a train of
giant mortars, mounted on titanic trucks and drawn by big motor
lorries, crashed over the pavements and vanished somewhere. Some of
our _conducteurs_ made friends with the English drivers, and swapped
opinions as to what was in the wind. One heard, "Well, those Frenchies
have got something up their sleeve. We were in the battle of Champagne,
and it began just like this." A voice from our American West began,
"Say--what kind of carburetors do you birds use?" New England asked,
"How many cars have you got?" And London, on being shown the stretcher
arrangements of our cars, exclaimed, "That ain't so dusty,--eh, wot?"
Round us, rising to the full sea of the battle, the tide of war surged
and disappeared. At dusk a company of dragoons, big helmeted men on big
horses, trotted by, their blue mantles and mediæval casques giving them
the air of crusaders. At night the important corners of the streets
were lit with cloth transparencies, with "Verdun" and a great black
arrow painted on them. Night and day, going as smoothly as if they
were linked by an invisible chain, went the hundred convoys of motor
lorries. There was a sense of something great in the air--a sense of
apprehension. "_Les Boches vont attaquer Verdun._"