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The rain
beat with a metallic tattoo on their steel hats. Their packs were all
sodden.
French poilus, detrained at Amiens station for a night on their way to
some other part of the front, jostled among British soldiers, and
their packs were a wonder to see. They were like traveling tinkers,
with pots and pans and boots slung about their faded blue coats, and
packs bulging with all the primitive needs of life in the desert of
the battlefields beyond civilization. They were unshaven, and wore
their steel casques low over their foreheads, without gaiety, without
the means of buying a little false hilarity, but grim and sullen--
looking and resentful of English soldiers walking or talking with
French cocottes.


IV

I saw a scene with a French poilu one day in the Street of the Three
Pebbles, during those battles of the Somme, when the French troops
were fighting on our right from Maricourt southward toward Roye. It
was like a scene from "Gaspard." The poilu was a middle-aged man, and
very drunk on some foul spirit which he had bought in a low cafe down
by the river.


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