I
would be taken to Bethune and along the road behind the trenches. But
nothing was to happen to me. Sir John French knitted his grey brows,
and suggested a visit to a wood where the soldiers had built wooden
walks and put up signs, naming them Piccadilly, Regent Street, and so
on.
"I should like to see something," I put in feebly.
I appreciated their kindly solicitude, but after all I was there to
see things; to take risks, if necessary, but to see.
"Then," said Sir John with decision, "we will send you to a hill from
which you can see."
The trip was arranged while I waited. Then he went with me to the door
and there we shook hands. He hoped I would have a comfortable trip,
and bowed me out most courteously. But in the doorway he thought of
something.
"Have you a camera with you?"
I had, and said so; a very good camera.
"I hope you do not mind if I ask you not to use it."
I did not mind. I promised at once to take no pictures, and indeed at
the end of the afternoon I found my unfortunate camera on the floor,
much buffeted and kicked about and entirely ignored.
The interview with Sir John French had given me an entirely unexpected
impression of the Field Marshal of the British Army. I had read his
reports fully, and from those unemotional reports of battles, of
movements and countermovements, I had formed a picture of a great
soldier without imagination, to whom a battle was an issue, not a
great human struggle--an austere man.
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