Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/160

130 and regulated our passage with the assurance of a London bobby at Oxford Circus. Where the traffic was congested and diverse, staff officers and Tommies, truck drivers and airmen bowed with an cqual meekness to the mandates of these calm, stern creatures. Yet the military policemen have never once seemed in key with the disorder of war. It is hard to appreciate that such clockwork detail makes that vast disorder possible at all.

For long stretches the drive might have been a pleasure jaunt. A black and yellow board at a crossroads, pointing the route to a Belgian field hospital, was a momentary reminder. The long road, lined with poplars or lime trees, bisected a highly cultivated countryside. Our entrance even into one of the two general headquarters towns that have replaced Saint Omer since the extension of the British line, had nothing to offer of the panoply of war. A brook rippled beneath an ancient bridge. Grey stone houses, half hidden among trees, terraced a steep hillside. A gothic church tower raised its sharp silhouette against a sky already sprinkled with gold.

This is one half of the heart of the British army.

Williams' words sounded like a joke in bad taste. Yet the other headquarters town a little farther on was equally rural, quite as picturesque.