And how is one to give any true picture of the confusion into which we flung ourselves at O----? O---- had been the town at which, a little more than a month ago, we had arrived so eagerly, so optimistically. It had been to us then the quietest retreat in the world--irritating, provoking by reason of its peace. The little school-house, the green well, the orchard, the bees, the long light evenings with no sound but the birds and running water--those things had been a month ago. We were hurled now into a world of dust and despair. The square market place, the houses that huddled round it were swallowed up by soldiers, horses, carts and whirling clouds. A wind blew and through the wind a hot sun blazed. Everywhere horses were neighing, cows and sheep were driven in thick herds through columns of soldiers, motor cars frantically pushed their way from place to place, and always, everywhere, covering every inch of ground flying, as it seemed, from the air, on to roofs, in and out of windows, from house to house, from corner to corner, was the humorous, pathetic, expectant, matter-of-fact, dreaming, stolid Russian soldier. He was to come to me, later on, in a very different fashion, but on this dreadful day in O---- he was simply part of the intolerable, depressing background. If this day were dreadful to me what must it have been to Trenchard! We were none of us aware at this time of what had happened to him two days before, nor did we know of his adventure of yesterday. O---- seemed to him, he has told me, like hell. We spent the day gathered together in a large white house that had formerly been the town-hall of O----. It had, I remember, high empty rooms all gilt and looking-glasses; the windows were broken and the dust came, in circles and twisting spirals, blowing over the gilt chairs and wooden floors. We made tea and sat miserably together. Semyonov was in some other part of the town. We were to wait here until Molozov arrived from B----.