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Updated: June 16, 2025
"A troop-train more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the last incline to the camp. "Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible forces were converging upon him.
There were tears and faces white with heartache, but these only after the last cheer had been flung upon the empty siding out of which the cars of the troop-train had passed. The tears and the white faces are for that immortal and glorious Army of the Base, whose finer courage and more heroic endurance make victory possible to the army of the Fighting First Line.
A haphazard, motley, rummy crowd, we might have been classed for anything but soldiers. At least, we gathered this from remarks we overheard as we marched silently along to the waiting troop-train. Strangely enough no one was crying. Every one was cheered. Little did hundreds of those women, those mothers, dream that this was the last look they would have at their loved ones.
A troop-train was rushing by, as I came back, covered with green branches and flowers. They went by with a cheer that cheer which sounds like a cheer sometimes, and sometimes, when two trains pass on adjoining tracks so fast that you only catch a blur of faces, like the windy shriek of lost souls.
A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. They lined up solemnly along the open platform with their backs to Michael's train and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher up Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing, towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof.
"And I'll meet you at the train the moment you're free and we'll be married that very day." All this five years ago on a murky station in the tragedy of parting, while Belgium was being trampled and the troop-train waited. She had eluded the vigilance of her parents and had met him outside the barracks, without forewarning.
She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved flag.
"I don't care a damn for anyone!" said Peter fiercely; "let her. I only want you." Peter secured his leave for Monday the 21st from Boulogne, which necessitated his leaving Le Havre at least twenty-four hours before that day. There were two ways of travelling across country in a troop-train, or by French expresses via Paris. He had heard so much of the latter plan that he determined to try it.
Several attempts had been made to rush re-enforcements forward by rail, but with poor success. The pilot engines had all been ditched. As a last desperate chance, Jewett determined to try a "black" train. Two engines were attached to a troop-train, and Jewett seated himself on the pilot of the forward locomotive. The lights were all put out.
Maybe it was chance that the place wasn't bombed again till two days ago, when that troop-train had to spend such a lot of time getting shunted at the junction. Maybe it was chance that the church, over across the street, hadn't been touched since the last drive, till our regiment's wounded were put in it and that it's been hit three times since then.
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