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TO BAPAUME 299
me to Bapaume. I said good-bye to my friends Majors Nethe
and von Weller, stowed my luggage away in the car and was
ready for starting. I cannot abstain from remarking that I
never had a more distinguished chauffeur than on this occasion,
as it was the head of the firm of Siemens and Halskc himself
who had donned the motor goggles and thick driving-gloves,
and with strong skilled hands grasped the wheel. I sat down
by his side and was thus conveniently at his elbow. A soldier
was seated in the car, armed with rifle and revolver. The
weather was fine, but the air was damp, as usual at this
season.
It was 10.45 when, with piercing shrieks of the hooter and
the warning trills of the pipe-horn, we bowled along the Boule-
vard du Midi and Rue des Beiges and came out on the Chaussée
de Möns—a hybrid between a country road and a paved street
and with a canal running by its left side. A whirl of fallen
brown leaves rose in the wake of the car as it dashed on to
Hal at the rate of seventy-four kilometres an hour. Narrow
winding streets lead up to the market square of the little
place, where the market was in full swing and where pigs and
vegetables were being sold from peasants’ carts and stalls.
Perfectly peaceful, rustic scenes, bustling life and motion
—
nothing to remind one of the war.
In Tubize the bells of the village church were tolling, as if
for a funeral. The country further on is somewhat hilly.
Beyond Braine le Comte the splendid high road was without
stone-paving. The autumn wind moaned in the yellow
crowns of the trees, and the leaves were falling around us
like snow-flakes.
We reached Soignies in a couple of minutes. Our speed
was up to eighty-two or eighty-four kilometres per hour,
falling off on slight curves to sixty. At all cross-roads, bridges
and villages German Landsturm men in spick-and-span helmets
and dark-blue uniforms stood posted, trusty and alert as ever.
The road to Mons is straight and was in excellent condition,
but the traffic was very inconsiderable. About noon a tyre
burst, but was replaced in thirteen minutes—one could see
that a great engineer was handling the nuts and tools.
In the Mons region we passed through the great coal-mining
district. All useless mineral taken out of the pits had to be
cleared away so as not to take up any space which might be
utilised to better advantage. By means of special tipping
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