They dined and wined in Amiens at the “Rhin,” the “Godebert,” or the “Cathédrale,” with a kind of spiritual exaltation in good food and drink, as though subconsciously they believed that this might be their last dinner in life, with good pals about them. They wanted to make the best of it⁠—and damn the price. In that spirit many of them went after other pleasures⁠—down the byways of the city, and damned the price again, which was a hellish one. Who blames them? It was war that was to blame, and those who made war possible.

Down the rue des Trois Cailloux, up and down, up and down, went English, and Scottish, and Irish, and Welsh, and Canadian, and Australian, and New Zealand fighting-men. In the winter they wore their trench-coats all splashed and caked up to the shoulders with the white, chalky mud of the Somme battlefields, and their top-boots and puttees were plastered with this mud, and their faces were smeared with it after a lorry drive or a tramp down from the line. The rain beat with a metallic tattoo on their steel hats. Their packs were all sodden.