It was a question full of significance, not only because it recognized implicitly the endless variety of types to which military discipline had given an apparent uniformity; but because it implied also that, for the time being, civil life had been obliterated, at least as far as they were concerned: it existed only precariously, and in a very attenuated form, somewhere in the rear of the embattled armies, but for all practical purposes it was not worth a moment’s consideration. Men had reverted to a more primitive stage in their development, and had become nocturnal beasts of prey, hunting each other in packs: this was the uniformity, quite distinct from the effect of military discipline, which their own nature had imposed on them. There is an extraordinary veracity in war, which strips man of every conventional covering he has, and leaves him to face a fact as naked and as inexorable as himself. But when a battalion has been so thinned that it becomes negligible as a fighting unit, and it is withdrawn from the line to refit, there is a tendency for individual characteristics to reassert themselves; the pressure of the opposed force is removed, and discipline, until the establishment has been reorganized, is necessarily relaxed. The bad temper which steamed or exploded ineffectively among this van-load of angry men, childish as it was, was symptomatic. Bourne, who had scored in so far as he had air and could sit on the floor, nursed his sore heel and was as hot and as angry as the rest of them.

It was already dusk when they detrained, and Bourne did not notice the name of the station, though he imagined they were somewhere in the neighbourhood of St Pol. They had a march of nine or ten miles in front of them; and another man having taken his place with the Lewis-gun cart, Bourne fell in between Shem and Martlow, and marched with his company again; but he was now quite lame, and tired easily. He was pretty well deadbeat before they came to the end, otherwise the march through the cool dusk was pleasant; a few scurrying rainstorms crossed their line, and evidently, from the state of the road, it had rained heavily there; but now the sky was mainly clear, with stars and a half-moon, which looked up at them again from the puddles, and there were long, straight lines of poplars which stood on either side of them, erect, like notes of exclamation. Bourne was a little indignant when Shem, a tough, sturdy and generous person, seeing him limping, offered to take his rifle. It was after eleven o’clock when they came to Beaumetz. As soon as they entered the village the battalion split itself up into several detachments, and Mr Sothern, in charge of the party in which Bourne was included, was not quite sure whether he had found the right billets; but he told the men to fall out while he went in search of information, and they sat in the kennel of the muddy street. Except for lights in one or two windows there was not a sign of life. The men sat there quietly, tired enough, but with not a trace of bad temper left in them; a kind of contentment seemed to soak into them from the stillness of the place.