That story has an end; for that boy died.

The drive back to Dunkirk was a mad one. Afterward I learned to know
that red-headed Flemish chauffeur, with his fiercely upcurled
moustache and his contempt of death. Rather, perhaps, I learned to
know his back. It was a reckless back. He wore a large army overcoat
with a cape and a cap with a tassel. When he really got under way at
anything from fifty miles an hour to the limit of the speedometer,
which was ninety miles, the gilt tassel, which in the Belgian cap
hangs over and touches the forehead, had a way of standing up; the
cape overcoat blew out in the air, cutting off my vision and my last
hope.

I regard that chauffeur as a menace on the high road. Certainly he is
not a lady's chauffeur. He never will be. Once at night he took
me--and the car--into an iron railroad gate, and bent the gate into a
V. I was bent into the whole alphabet.

The car was a limousine. After that one cold ride from Calais to La
Panne I was always in a limousine--always, of course, where a car
could go at all. There may be other writers who have been equally
fortunate, but most of the stories are of frightful hardships. I was
not always comfortable. I was frequently in danger. But to and from
the front I rode soft and warm and comfortable. Often I had a bottle
of hot coffee and sandwiches. Except for the two carbines strapped to
the speedometer, except for the soldier-chauffeur and the orderly who
sat together outside, except for the eternal consulting of maps and
showing of passes, I might have been making a pleasure tour of the
towns of Northern France and Belgium. In fact, I have toured abroad