We were elated beyond measure and when we were dismissed we saluted with
all the smartness of which we were capable in order to please the
Captain, and walked off the parade ground in the strictest regulation
manner. Once they were off the parade ground the men rushed towards
their tents, hallooing like schoolboys.

The baths were not unwelcome, although to stand in a tub under a thin
drip of hot water in front of a broken window through which a cold gust
of wind came and whistled round our shoulders, was no pleasure. But the
ordeal was quickly over and before eleven o'clock in the morning most of
us were free to do as we pleased. The greater part of the day was still
before us and the morrow was a long way off.

There was much bustling and shouting and singing. It was easy to please
us for pleasure was such a rarity. I was scheming how to make the most
of this precious holiday. I decided to go for a solitary walk. I left
the camp and strolled up a hill from where I could get a fine view of
the surrounding country.

I gazed in an eastward direction. All the snow had melted, the fields,
the bare trees and hedges, were steeped in warm sunlight. In the
distance there was a gentle slope crowned by a long line of poplars.

Beyond the poplars, about eight miles away, there was something I did
not see, although I knew it was there--a stupid, terrible, and uncouth
monster that stretched in a zig-zag winding course from the North Sea to
the Alps. It was strangely silent at that hour, but I was fascinated by
it and thought about it harder and harder, in spite of myself. I became
increasingly conscious of it and it grew upon me until it darkened