Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/70

50 and British were everywhere in evidence, but the British, naturally, predominated.

From the waterfront I watched transports enter and leave the harbour. On the docks the work of unloading proceeded with a precise efficiency. In the streets, wagons and automobile trucks, to which good-natured Tommies clung, hurried tempestuously. Officers strolled here and there, swinging little canes. Their faces were rather more serious than the faces scanned in London. All at once you realised that you were actually on the soil of war-torn France, within a few miles of the grotesque and deadly battle of the trenches.

And in the train the shadow of the war deepened again. As we steamed inland across a landscape which, for me, had always had an air of sedate pleasuring, we caught glimpses of tents, and the intricate movements of men at battle drill.

Elderly French Territorials in faded blue and red uniforms lined the railroad tracks and guarded the bridges. As our cars flashed past they presented arms or stood at attention. We threaded through great supply trains on temporary tracks in the vicinity of Rouen. The heat was unreal in such a country. It seemed that it must be an off-giving from the great, near-by forge of battle. Then darkness closed over the steaming world, as