I had innocently blundered into one of the most important troop
movements of the war, but how many and where they were coming from or
where they were going to I pledged myself not to disclose. The
inevitable company of cyclists rode at the head of the long column that
was still passing when I went to bed. Next came an imposing staff--then
a mounted band blaring away, then a crack guard cavalry regiment, proud
standard flying, then cavalry less elite, here and there a palefaced
spectacled trooper who looked like a converted theological student.
Whole regiments came riding down the pike singing "The Red, White, and
Black" in unison--a stirring, marching song, which for patriotic fervor
and fighting spirit "puts it all over" the British "It's a Long Way from
Tipperary."
It was a Roman holiday for the French inhabitants of the town of ----,
who lined the roads en masse quivering with suppressed emotion and
happiness, thinking they were eyewitnessing a great German retreat. "Our
French soldiers will soon be here again," they whispered to one another.
But it wasn't a retreat--it was one of those mysterious strategic shifts
you read about in the papers without really realizing what it means till
you see it--great masses being rushed from one battlefield to another on
the long line.
For weeks these same regiments had been daily "decimated," "cut to
pieces," and otherwise badly mauled by English war correspondents, but
you would never have suspected it.
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