carters snapped their whips, the horses pulled, the noisy, lumbering,
creaky line moved on, and the men fell in behind, in any order.

I started my car again and looked for an opening through the mêlée.

Beyond the cross, the road narrowed and flanked one of the southeastern
forts of the city. A meadow, which sloped gently upward from the road to
the abrupt hillside of the fortress, had been used as a place of
encampment and had been trodden into a surface of thick cheesy mire.
Here and there were the ashes of fires. There were hundreds of such
places round the moorland villages between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. The
fort looked squarely down on Verdun, and over its grassy height came the
drumming of the battle, and the frequent crash of big shells falling
into the city.

In a corner lay the anatomical relics of some horses killed by an
air-bomb the day before. And even as I noted them, I heard the muffled
Pom! Pom! Pom! of anti-aircraft guns. My back was to the river and I
could not see what was going on.

"What is it?" I said to a Zouave who was plodding along beside the
ambulance.

"Des Boches--crossing the river."

The regiment plodded on as before. Now and then a soldier would stop and
look up at the aeroplanes.

"He's coming!" I heard a voice exclaim.