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The fine weather came to an end the same day, and it rained hard all the time, which would have been bad enough in bivouacs, and was worse for us who had to spend most of our day on some working-party, either dug-outs, or trying to drain some hopelessly water-logged communication trench, such as the one from Manor Farm to Square Wood.
Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the enemy's bivouacs. This time there was no need to go far in quest of them.
The column which was halted thus waiting for the wagon trains and artillery to climb a hill, grew weary of standing. The men would break ranks and sit down in the fence corners, where they built little camp-fires, and, rainy as it was, they fell asleep leaning against each other in these little bivouacs.
Wollaston with the machine guns and ammunition limbers which had entrained at Godewaersvelde and travelled all night, and at 4.30 p.m., by Capt. John Burnett with the rest of the Transport. The latter had come by road, spending one night in bivouacs at Vieux Berquin on the way.
"Now, Harry, you've touched upon the point in which, you must confess, my genius always stood unrivalled acknowledge, if you are not dead to gratitude acknowledge how often should you have gone supperless to bed in our bivouacs in the Peninsula, had it not been for the ingenuity of your humble servant avow, that if mutton was to be had, and beef to be purloined, within a circuit of twenty miles round, our mess certainly kept no fast days.
The road to Philippopolis was crowded with wounded and refugees. Peasant families struggled along with all their household goods piled upon a single cart. Ammunition wagons and droves of cattle, rushing along against the tide of human beings, toward the distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless.
Now fate turned the special defence of the city into the means of its destruction; while the army of Marcellus quartered in the suburbs suffered but little, fevers desolated the Phoenician and Syracusan bivouacs. Hippocrates died; Himilco and most of the Africans died also; the survivors of the two armies, mostly native Siceli, dispersed into the neighbouring cities.
We had not taken beds, as these incumbrances were unnecessary when in light marching order. We therefore made separate bivouacs, Florian and his people about a hundred yards distant, while a rug laid upon the ground was sufficient for my wife. I made myself comfortable in a similar manner. Lions were roaring all night.
"The various regiments were brilliantly uniformed according to the aesthetic taste of peace," wrote General Fry, then an officer on McDowell's staff, and "during the nineteenth and twentieth the bivouacs at Centreville, almost within cannon range of the enemy, were thronged with visitors, official and unofficial, who came in carriages from Washington, were under no military restraint, and passed to and fro among the troops as they pleased, giving the scene the appearance of a monster military picnic."
In the village was to be seen no living thing except some soldiers, who in the broken cellars were making their bivouacs.
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