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368 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
ever experienced, a record in speed. Tlie Duke drove and
managed the car with arnazing coolness and presence of mind.
Where the great main road was straight and clear he spurted
up to between ninety and one hundred kilometres an hour. I
felt sometimes as if I could hardly breathe, but it was a glorious
sensation to fly over the country at this mad, tearing pace.
At 9.52 a.m. we entered Cambrai where the Red Cross flag
over the school-house was still wrapped in a thin veil of fog.
To the right of the road was a large common grave, richly
ornamented with flowers, and in the fields close by French
peasants were gathering in the sugar-beet. A whole column
of heavy carts loaded with beet drove up into a village we
passed, but in this case the drivers were French peasants.
At 10.25—Le Cateau. From this point we turned off on to
some by-roads without stone-paving in the direction of
Bergues and Le Nouvion. The civil population here is fairly
numerous, and whatever else there may be a shortage of,
there is certainly no lack of poultry. Le Nouvion has been
hardly dealt with. In the main street there are only a few
houses left, all the others are in ruins. At the far end of the
village a road runs through a wood where barricades have been
thrown up. German troops are only met with in the large
places, such as Hirson, where a fort meets the eye to the
right of the road.
After a long pause necessitated by a burst tyre we arrived
at Méziéres at 12.52 and crossed the Meuse. Half an hour
later we drove into the market square at Sedan, where Turenne
was still looking down on the disquietude of distant generations.
Here we sacrificed an hour for dinner, and were soon off again
in the direction of Carignan and Montmédy, where we found
life was as busy as ever.
The next place we come to is the grey and solid-looking
Marville. Afterwards the country becomes more broken, until
we reach the utterly ruined village of Noers. At one point
the road rises, curving slightly. We are tearing forward at a
furious pace when just on the crest of the hill we meet another
car as much in a hurry as ourselves. We had the narrowest
possible escape from colliding at an aggregate speed of about
120 English miles an hour. There could not have been room
for a sheet of paper between the two cars and we had the
Duke’s perfect coolness to thank for having escaped with our
lives from that little adventure.
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