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Updated: June 1, 2025
But through it all, Selingman, lying on his back and snoring loudly, slept. He was awakened at last by the feeling that some one had entered the room. He sat up and blinked. "Hullo!" he exclaimed. A man in the weird disguise of a motor-cyclist was standing at the foot of the bed. Selingman continued to blink. He was not wholly awake and his visitor's appearance was unpleasant.
Because the Allies failed to appreciate it, they gained a reputation for rudeness. A French car, flying the flag of the general, a squad of Tommies under arms, a motor-cyclist carrying despatches could not understand that a conversation on a street crossing was a sacred ceremony. So they shouldered the conversationalists aside or splashed them with mud. It was intolerable.
We got out, and here again was our statesman putting his shoulder to the wheel. That is the way of the French in war. Everybody tries to help. By this time the transport chauffeurs remembered that they also were Frenchmen; and as Frenchmen are polite even in time of war, they let us by. A motor-cyclist approached with his hand up. "Stop here!" he called.
We had no carbide, and my carburetter had jibbed, so we decided to stop at Ciry for the night. At the inn we found many drinks particularly some wonderful cherry brandy and a friendly motor-cyclist who told us of a billet that an officer was probably going to leave. We went there.
He glanced over his shoulder. A motor-cyclist, white with dust, was riding after him with tremendous energy. "Hola!" cried Voles, snatching another look. "What's the matter?"
"I'm I'm try ing not to!" were the words that were rattled out of the middle-aged man. Tom gave his wheel a desperate twist to get out of the way. The motor-cyclist tried to do the same, but the machine he was on appeared to want matters its own way. He came straight for Tom, and a disastrous collision might have resulted had not another stone been in the way.
I walked behind two rows of French and British infantry, lying ready in shallow newly-dug trenches. They looked grave and thoughtful; some of them had removed their tunics. I remember noting that of four hundred men I passed not one was talking to his neighbour. I remember noticing a few horses waiting behind, and motor-cyclist messengers hurriedly arriving and hurriedly departing.
The motor-cyclist, kneeling and working hard at his machine, had raised his head at Dickson's approach and beheld a wild apparition a short man in ragged tweeds, with a bloody brow and long smears of blood on his cheeks. The next second he observed the threat of attack, and ducked his head so that the spanner only grazed his scalp.
Returning safely to Abbéville, they would write hair-raising accounts of the dangers they had passed through to the motor-cycling papers. It is only right that I should here once and for all confess there is no finer teller of tall stories than the motor-cyclist despatch rider....
"Oh!" with a rush of hopefulness "you have no orders, I suppose, for the nd Brigade?" mentioning our Brigade. "No, sir." I broke off and strode up the hillside, determined at any rate to gather some sort of information from the house the motor-cyclist had just left. I came upon a bare-looking, two-storied brick building with plain doors and windows.
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