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ON THE WAY TO THE FIFTH ARMY 65
The car is ready. We step in. I am dressed in furs and
have a mackintosh. I also bring a pair of field-glasses and a
sketch-book. It is no longer raining, but the sky is over-
cast and the weather chilly and autumnal after all the suffocat-
ing heat which the soldiers had to endure during the first phase
of the campaign. We drive southward at breakneck speed.
I cannot deny that I had to struggle against the feeling of
growing excitement. It was not mere manoeuvres ; it was war
itself, a part of the greatest struggle that had ever been fought
on earth. It was, moreover, the struggle on the western front,
the fight against the French, rightly considered to be the
sturdiest and best soldiers among Germany’s opponents.
When one approaches such a spot, and when for the first time
in one’s life one enters the zone of fire, it is difficult not to feel,
whether one admits it or not, a certain tension, even if one has
been through some wild adventures in Asia. Every minute
we get nearer the firing line, and as the car slows down at the
corners we hear the cannonade more plainly. The booming
of the guns sounds dull and heavy, the ground quivers.
But events move all too fast. Observations and impres-
sions follow so quickly upon one another that it is difficult to
assimilate them all. I make my notes as usual, even when
the car is racing along at its fastest, and my writing is far
from copper-plate. We still have 32 kilometres to Septsarges,
a village 21 kilometres north-west of Verdun. How often did
I not wish to stop—to impress more strongly on my mind
some vivid and warlike picture, but as I am stopping for two
days with the 5th Army, I shall, no doubt, have an opportunity
of revisiting this section. The whole road is full of supply
columns moving southward, and we meet innumerable empty
transport lorries on the way north, to be reloaded at some
railway station. Here we also see fresh young troops, all
strapping fellows, who have come direct from Germany to go
straight to victory or death. All are jolly and eager ; truly,
they look as if the whole affair were to them but an autumn
manoeuvre, and as if they felt no trace of excitement. They
march along with easy bearing and sing merry soldiers’ ditties
under the leaden skies now darkening this unhappy bleeding
France. They light their pipes and their eternal cigarettes,
laugh and chat—as if they were going to a picnic in the
country. In reality they are going out to fill the gaps made
by the French fire in the ranks of their comrades. They are
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