We worked until we almost dropped with sheer fatigue. Iron rods and bars
for reinforcing pill-boxes, bags of cement, boxes of tools, parts of
machinery, all went on to the train. Then we entered a big shed, where
a number of tar-barrels stood in a row. We rolled them out and placed
them by the timber stacks. We laid a pick beside each barrel so that it
could be broached, the tar set alight, and the entire park destroyed at
a moment's notice.

It was dark when we stopped work. We reached camp after an hour's
wearisome marching. We waited in a long queue outside the cook-house.
The cooks served out the greasy stew as quickly as they could, but we
were so tired and ill-tempered that we shouted abuse at them without
reason and without being provoked, and banged our plates and tins. The
war, the advance, the slaughter were forgotten. We were conscious of
nothing but weariness, stiffness, and petty irritation.

The following day we marched to a ration dump. The wooden cases of
rations were piled up in gigantic cubes, so that the entire dump looked
like a town of windowless, wooden buildings. We formed one long file
that circled slowly past the stacks, each man taking one case on to his
shoulder or back and carrying it to the train. And so we circled round
and round throughout the monotonous day.

In the evening I did not wait in the dinner queue, but went to the St.
Martin. It was kept by an old woman and her two daughters. They were
tortured by anxiety:

"Les Allemands vont venir ici--de Shermans come heer?" they asked. But I
knew no more than they did. I told them, against my own conviction, that