resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and
final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the
old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of
any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed
into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various
types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the _table
d'hôte_, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks,
and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest
news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came
quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel
S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce
drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide,
the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I
forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive--far
more beautiful than I had expected--over undulating country, with distant
views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or
forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill,
over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes
back to me, where a road to the coast--that coast which the Germans
so nearly reached!--diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands
westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of
the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk
hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder
brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely
compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong
old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first
distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was
our destination--extraordinarily fine!--its ancient church a towered
mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs
into one harmonious whole."