Item 01: G. O. Hawkins articles and notes ca. 1916-1919 - Page 140
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[Page 140]
6
Battalion on the move, a Battalion similar in every respect to that in the tail of which we have become lost and dissolved by gloom.
Masses of standing ruin on either side of the road, perhaps narrower here than elsewhere, help to make the darkness absolute. Every sense except those of touch and hearing have become effete. Unseen baggage brushes baggage, wheel hubs graze wheel hubs, transport drivers lose control of their mules, timid horses become restive, marching men lump together and lose their places, officers ride up and down on the narrow footways cursing and shouting orders.
Each column wrinkles, compresses, brakes and becomes all halts and starts. Above the confusion of a multiplicity of sounds the graphic oaths and profane curses of men, muttered in low but more or less angery voices, becomes a vocal tangle in the black air.
At last two Battalions, with