Pushing soldiers this way and that, seizing horses' heads,
straining their voices against the din of clattering motors, they held
up each stream of traffic in turn for a few minutes and passed the
other through.
[Sidenote: An English soldier keeps his air of efficiency.]
[Sidenote: Men in great need of food.]
Conspicuous in his khaki among this spate of Italian gray, stood an
English soldier contentedly munching dry brown bread. The motor-bicycle
at his side indicated him as a despatch-rider belonging to one of the
batteries. It would have been hard to say whether machine or man was the
more travel-stained. The cycle's front wheel was badly bent, evidently
by some collision; the soldier's hand was bound with a dirty rag, and
his face clotted with the blood of a congealed scratch, the result of
having been pushed off the road by a motor-lorry in the dark and falling
head-long down a stone embankment. Yet about both mount and man there
was still an air of efficiency and unimpaired fundamental soundness that
was encouraging, and the mud-plastered figure saluted the English
officer at my side with a flick of the wrist that would have passed on
the parade-ground at Wellington Barracks. Two guns of his battery, he
reported, were three or four miles back down the road; the men were
dead-beat, but the worst was that they had had nothing to eat for
thirty-six hours, owing to the tractor that had their rations on board
catching fire and burning them; they had picked up scraps of bread that
other troops had dropped, and some of them had tried and appreciated
cutlets from a dead mule; they needed food to restore their strength for
they had been working hard without sleep for two days and nights.
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