And by noon he was in utter despair. The street through the town was by then choked from end to end with a seething mass of men and cattle and vehicles, military transport and ammunition wagons, soldiers, old peasant men and boys, women with children clutching their skirts or wailing in their arms, country carts piled with bedding and furniture, squealing pigs and squawking leg-tethered poultry, with huddled clinging old crones and round-eyed infants. And when Papa was told that the road was blocked in the same way for miles back, that the Germans were coming fast, that the whole army was retiring as fast as it could, he groaned in despair. He watched the slow torrent struggling and scrambling along the choked street, the impatience of the officers and dull apathy of the men in the marching regiments as they progressed a few yards and halted for the head of the column to clear a way; and he pictured to himself visions of a squadron of Uhlans swooping down on the crowded road back there and the havoc they would make in the packed masses under their lances. About noon he found a new interest and fresh food for thought. A regiment arrived and, instead of pushing on through the town as the others had done, sought billets there and halted. Six men were billeted on Papa Laval, and between the smattering of broken French that one of them spoke and Papa’s equally broken English it was possible to hold some conversation and glean some understanding of the recent battle. But the men were too worn out, too dead beat, too utterly fatigued to talk much. They ate and drank and then flung themselves down to sleep, and all that Papa learned was that in truth a big battle had been fought, that the Germans had been held, but that for some reason the English were retreating. Fugitives from Maubeuge direction had told a similar tale of the retreat of the French, and Papa groaned again and wandered out into the street to curse impotently as he watched the struggling tide of fugitives that still poured with desperate slowness through the town. ‘Perhaps it would be better,’ he told his daughter at last and very reluctantly, ‘for you to go away while there is yet time. Not for yourself, but for the sake of the little ones. There will be fighting here, as I see it. This regiment remaining while all the others pass through means a rearguard action, an attempt to cover the retreat of the others. But that is a plan without hope. There is only a handful of men left to hold the town, and they are worn to the edge of exhaustion with marching and fighting. The Germans will attack in force, they will sweep through the town and take the bridge. That no doubt is the plan, and holding the town and the bridge they will sever the English army and the retreat will be a rout. Yes, my child, you had better go now.’