Next morning at 2 a.m. I was awakened from frowsy sleep by a French
soldier, laden with baggage, who stumbled headlong into the railway
carriage which I was sharing with three other British officers. We were
at Amiens. I was last here ten months before, when my Division was
coming back from rest to fight a second time upon the Somme. I did not
sleep again, but watched the sunrise behind an avenue of poplars, as we
passed through Creil, and the woods of Chantilly shining wonderfully in
the early morning light. I spent that day in Paris and left again in the
evening.

Next morning, the 8th, I awoke at Bourg in High Savoy. Here too the
poplar dominates in the valleys. We ran along the shores of Lake Bourget
and up the beautiful valley of the Arc in misty rain. We arrived at
Modane at 10 a.m., and I was booked through to Palmanova, a new name to
me at that time. The train left an hour later and, as we lunched, we
passed through the Mont Cenis tunnel and slid rapidly downwards through
Alpine valleys, charming enough but less beautiful than those on the
French side of the frontier. Very soon it became perceptibly warmer,
electric fans were set in motion and ice was served with the wine.

I found that I had six hours to wait at Turin before the train left for
Milan. My fleeting impression of Turin was of a very well-planned city,
its Corsi spacious and well shaded with trees, its trams multitudinous,
its many distant vistas of wooded hills and of the Superga Palace beyond
the Po a delight to the eye. But I found less animation there than I had
expected, except in a church, where a priest was ferociously declaiming
and gesticulating at a perspiring crowd, mostly women, who were
patiently fanning themselves in the stifling, unventilated heat. I was
an object of interest in the streets, where the British uniform was not
yet well known. Some took me for a Russian and some little boys ran