The snow came again and one went on next day, blinded by the feathery touch of flakes that closed one’s eyes so gently, crept down one’s neck and pockets, lodged heavily in one’s lap when mounted, clung in a frozen garment to one’s coat when walking, hissed softly on one’s pipe and made one giddy with the silent, whirling, endless pattern which blotted out the landscape, great flakes like white butterflies, soft, velvety, beautiful but also like little hands that sought to stop one persistently, insidiously. “Go back,” said their owner, “go back. We have hidden the road and the ditches and all the country. We have closed your eyelids and you cannot see. Go back before you reach that mad place where we have covered over silent things that once were men, trying to give back beauty to the ugliness that you have made. Why do you march on in spite of us? Do you seek to become as they? Go back. Go back,” they whispered.
But we pushed blindly through, stumbling to another billet to hear that the snow had stalled the motor lorries and therefore there were no rations for the men and that the next day’s march was twenty miles.
During the night a thaw set in. Snowflakes turned to cold rain and in the dawn the men splashed, shivering, and harnessed the shivering horses. One or two may have drunk a cup of coffee given them by the villagers. The rest knew empty stomachs as well as shivering. The village had once been in the war zone and only old women and children clung precariously to life. They had no food to give or sell. The parade was ordered for six o’clock. Some of the rear wagons, in difficulties with teams, had not come in till the dawn, the Captain and all of them having shared a biscuit or two since breakfast. But at six the battery was reported ready and not a man was late or sick. The horses had been in the open all night.
So on we went again with pools of water on the icy crust of the road, the rain dripping off our caps. Would there be food at the other end? Our stomachs cried out for it.
And back in England full-fed fathers hearing the rain splashing against the windows put an extra coal on the fire, crying again, “We will fight to the last man!”; railway men and munitioners yelled, “Down tools! We need more pay!” and the Government flung our purses to them and said, “Help yourselves--of course we shall count on you to keep us in power at the next election.”