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We motor-cyclists stood aside just criticising the guns and men and horses. We felt again that shyness we had felt at Chatham in front of the professional soldier. Then we remembered that we had been through the Retreat and the Advance, and went back to tea content. They are what I knew or thought I knew at the time this was written.
The faces of the men were awful. I smiled at one or two, but they shook their heads and turned away. One sergeant as he passed was muttering to himself, as if he were repeating something over and over again so as to learn it by rote "My gun, my gun, my gun!" At this moment an order came from some one for the motor-cyclists to retire to the farm where we had slept the night.
He rose, and lifting Melchard's legs, made him lie at full length along the seat farthest from the engine and the motor-cyclists. Next, he drew down the little corner-blinds of each window, leaving the door-blinds up; then sat down again resuming his attitude of abstraction.
Teddy and Alec were going into the London Scottish. Early in the morning I started for London to join them, but on the way up I read the paragraph in which the War Office appealed for motor-cyclists. So I went straight to Scotland Yard. There I was taken up to a large room full of benches crammed with all sorts and conditions of men. The old fellow on my right was a sign-writer.
Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere the same va et vient of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still to come.
The sun was shining very brightly. Old women were sleeping at the doors; children were playing lazily on the road. Soon one or two motor-cyclists dribbled in, and about an hour later a section of the Signal Company arrived after a risky dash along country lanes. They outspanned, and we, as always, made for the inn. There was a mother in the big room.
The bread and fruit we devoured, together with a lunch-tongue, from that excellent Chateau at La Haute Maison the mattresses we took into a large airy room and slept on, until we were wakened by the peevish tones of the other motor-cyclists who had ridden with the column.
After following a column of motor-lorries a couple of miles we stuck twice in trying to get past the rearmost lorry we tried the road by Dranoutre and Locre. But these country lanes were worse of surface than the main road greasy pavé is better that greasy rocks and they were filled with odd detachments of French artillery. The two 2nd Corps motor-cyclists turned back.
I had been "next for duty" since ten o'clock, but at two I began to doze, because between two and five there is not often work for the despatch rider. At three I awoke to much shouting and anxious hullabaloo. The intelligence officer was rousing us hurriedly "All motor-cyclists turn out. Pack up kit. Seven wanted at once in the Signal Office."
"Delehanty's death on motor-cyclists since one ran him down last summer. I told him this feller was a chauffeur in the same garage as me, and trailing me now on a bet, but that the license on his machine was phony. We'll be there and back before he gets through explaining at the station-house."
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