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He told me to go out to Potsdam with caution, and he warned me that I should have the utmost difficulty in getting anywhere near the military sidings of the railway station there. I asked another usually extremely well-informed friend if there was anything particular happening in the war, and told him that I thought of going to Potsdam, and he said, "What for?
Most telling of all the innumerably suggestive features to me were the streets of empty white tents at the casualty clearing stations, and the empty hospital cars on the railway sidings, and the new enclosures for prisoners for these spoke the human note. These told that man was to be the target.
The bishop wandered along the platform to its end, and stood contemplating the convergent ways that gather together beyond the station and plunge into the hillside and the wilderness of sidings and trucks, signal-boxes, huts, coal-pits, electric standards, goods sheds, turntables, and engine-houses, that ends in a bluish bricked-up cliff against the hill.
Already one steamer was lying at the wharf by the marine tower, waiting for the machinery to start, and others lay behind her, farther down the river. Long strings of box cars filled the Belt Line sidings, ready to roll into the elevator at the word. Bannon seated himself on the railing, and caught his toes between the supports.
As fate would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the sex being rudely shaken. In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in the bank for the purpose.
And those that have not already become a mere lifeless heap of rags have been jolted in country carts to some railway-station, and there, or at successive junctions, have been shunted on sidings for endless hours. And now, with their wounds still slowly bleeding or oozing, they are picked out by tender hands, and the most crying cases are roughly, dressed before consigning to a hospital.
The journey was slow, for the line ahead of us was choked with supply trains, some of which were needed at the front as badly as ourselves. Now and then trains waited on sidings to let us by, and by that means we became separated from the other troop trains, our regiment leading all the others in the end by almost half a day.
Of course you don't need to be told that there has been a tremendous amount of work done on the eastern road all through the war. Extra tracks have been laid all the way between Paris and Chelles, the outer line of defenses of the city and at the stations between Gagny and Chelles the sidings extend so far on the western side of the tracks as to almost reach out of sight.
It was a warm day, windless and clear, and as the train stopped at roadside stations or drew up at sidings, they could not help being impressed by the peace which seemed to reign. The birds still sang on the tree branches, cattle still lowed in the fields, and peasants still worked on their little farms. "If one closed one's eyes, it would seem as though war were impossible," said Bob.
Overloaded trains were stalled and harbors froze over, imprisoning the coal barges. Thirty-seven ships laden with essential military supplies were held up in New York harbor for lack of fuel, and long strings of empties blocked the sidings, while the shippers all over the country cried for cars.
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