Dawn broke, and it got lighter and lighter--and so we entered Montagne. The quartermaster had had a nice job billeting at 2.0 a.m., but he had done it, and the men dropped on to their straw, into outhouses, anywhere. The accommodation seemed small and bad, but that could be arranged later. To get the men in, that was the main thing. One old woman fussed terribly, and the men looked like bayoneting her! We soon got the men in somehow. Then for our own billets. We agreed to have a scratch breakfast as soon as it could be procured. Meanwhile I went to the end of the village and found myself on the edge of the tableland; before me was spread out a great valley, with a poplar-lined road flung right across it; villages were dotted about; there were woods, and white ribbon by-roads. And over it all glowed the slant morning sun. I was on the edge of a chalky plateau; it was all just as I had imagined. I slept from 11.0 a.m. to 7.0 p.m., when I got up for a meal at which we were all short-tempered! And at 9.0 p.m. I retired again to sleep till 7.0 next morning. Montagne--How shall I be able to create a picture of Montagne? As I look back at all those eight months, the whole adventure seems unreal, a dream; yet somehow those first few days in the little village had for me a dream-like quality, unlike any other time. I think that then I felt that I was living in an unreality; whereas at other times life was real enough; and it is only now, afterwards, that these days are gradually melting through distance into dreams. At any rate, if the next few pages are dull to the reader, let him try and weave into them a sort of fairy glamour, and imagine a kind of spell cast over everything in which people moved as in a dream. First, there was the country itself. The next day (after a day’s sleep and a night’s on top of it) was, if I remember right, rather wet, and we had kit inspection in billets, and tried to eke out the hours by gas-helmet drill, and arm-drill in squads distributed about the various farmyards and barns. Then Captain Dixon decided to take the company out on a short route march, and as it was raining very steadily we took half the company with _two_ waterproof sheets per man. One sheet was thrown round the shoulders in the usual way; the other was tied kilt-wise round the waist. The result was an effective rainproof, if unmilitary-looking dress! We set off and soon came to a large wood with a broad ride through it.