The cocoa and
other advertisements had been taken off and they had been hastily
painted a yellowish grey. Here and there we met one on the road,
filled and overflowing with troops, and looking curiously like the
"rubber-neck wagons" of New York.
Aside from the transports and a few small Indian ammunition carts,
with open bodies made of slats, and drawn by two mules, with an
impassive turbaned driver calling strange words to his team, there was
no sign of war. No bombarding disturbed the heavy atmosphere; no
aeroplanes were overhead. There was no barbed wire, no trenches. Only
muddy sugarbeet fields on each side of the narrow road, a few winter
trees, and the beat of the rain on the windows.
At last, with an extra lurch, the car drew up in the village of Ham.
At a gate in a brick wall a Scotch soldier in kilts, carrying a rifle,
came forward. Our errand was explained and he went off to find Makand
Singh, a major in the Lahore Lancers and in charge of the post.
It was a curious picture that I surveyed through the opened door of
the car. We were in the centre of the village, and at the intersection
of a crossroads was a tall cross with a life-size Christ. Underneath
the cross, in varying attitudes of dampness and curiosity, were a
dozen Indians, Mohammedans by faith. Some of them held horses which,
in spite of the rain, they had been exercising.
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