With no industries of any importance, and becoming less and less of an
economic center as the depopulation of the Woevre continued, Verdun
lived for its garrison. A fortress since Roman days, the city could not
escape its historic destiny. Remembering the citadel, the buttressed
cathedral, the soldiery, and the military tradition, the visitor felt
himself to be in a soldier's country strong with the memory of many
wars.

The next day, at noon, we were ordered to go to M------, and at 12.15 we
were in convoy formation in the road by the barracks wall. The great
route nationale from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun runs through a rolling,
buff-brown moorland, poor in villages and arid and desolate in aspect.
Now it sinks through moorland valleys, now it cuts bowl-shaped
depressions in which the spring rains have bred green quagmires, and
now, rising, leaps the crest of a hill commanding a landscape of
ocean-like immensity.

Gray segments of the road disappear ahead behind fuzzy monticules; a
cloud of wood-smoke hangs low over some invisible village in a fold of
the moor, and patches of woodland lie like mantles on the barren slopes.
Great swathes of barbed wire, a quarter of a mile in width, advancing
and retreating, rising and falling with the geographical nature of the
defensive position, disappear on both sides to the horizon. And so thick
is this wire spread, that after a certain distance the eye fails to
distinguish the individual threads and sees only rows of stout black
posts filled with a steely, purple mist.

We went though several villages, being greeted in every one with the
inevitable error, Anglais! We dodged interminable motor-convoys carrying
troops, the poilus sitting unconcernedly along the benches at the side,