At this particular moment, however, it was the military, rather than the civil authorities, who were able to help us on our way. By the _service de renseignements_, or military intelligence department, at Belfort, we were given a special pass to go to Nancy by way of Dijon and Chalindrey (the direct route by Epinal being impossible), and when we got back to Dijon General Brissaud himself _viséd_ our passports for the same destination. Armed with these double credentials we started from Dijon on what in ordinary times is a journey of six hours, instead of which it took us from three o’clock in the afternoon till half-past eight next morning. The first big check was at Chalindrey, close to Langres, where we had a three hours’ wait during which we saw two interesting little sidelights on the war. In those days all station-restaurants had been taken over for the use of the army, and as we were not allowed to stay on the platform or to sit in the train, we thought at first that we should have to kick our heels till midnight in the station yard. It was a dark and chilly prospect. However, by the help of a friendly private and persistent knocking at a back door, we did at last force our way into the refreshment room, and on the strength of being English were allowed to order some supper. While we were eating it a taciturn sergeant demanded our papers and carried them off into the outer darkness. Then there was a long pause. We waited and waited, each moment getting more and more afraid that they were not going to get us through after all, when the door opened and out of the _ewigkeit_, nearly two hundred miles from the nearest English troops, two Red Cross Tommies, an Australian and a Lanarkshire miner, walked into the room. They were under the escort, not to say the arrest, of the Station Commandant, who wanted to confront them with us to see if the story they told was true. It was, as a matter of fact, rather lame. They said that after the Battle of the Marne they had lost the rest of their detachment somewhere near Compiègne, and being tired of hospital work were trying to reach the front, in the hope of being allowed to do some fighting. Whether they were deserters or not they certainly had their full share of Scotch and Australian mother-wit, or they could never have got so far without being arrested. Three months later, by some miracle, for they spoke no French and had only their ordinary soldiers’ passes, they turned up in Nancy, still on their own, and were taken to Toul, this time, I believe, under close arrest. As they were the unconscious means of doing us a good turn, I rather hope that they were not impostors, and that they were not too hardly dealt with. Hearing me talking to them, a French officer, Commandant Chesnot of the 360th Regiment of the Reserve, introduced himself as an ardent admirer of England, and invited us to make the rest of the journey in the reserved carriage which he shared with another officer.