All the marching had so far been done along pleasant country roads through a country of hedges and orchards, very like central and southern England. But the aspect changed when, shortly after leaving St Aubin, we reached the Route Nationale. The battalion wheeled to the left, and we were marching down one of the _chaussées pavées_ which are a special feature of Belgium and Northern France. The _chaussée_, or centre of the road, is paved with large uneven cobbles, on a width of eight to ten yards. On each side of the paved roadway a macadamised surface, about three yards broad, slopes away at a steep camber to the well-kept grass _accôtement_, which would be very nice to walk on were it not for the narrow channels every twenty or thirty yards draining to the deep, clean ditch, which runs outside the line of beautiful trees that flank both sides of the road. We marched straight through the town of Maubeuge, which was full of French soldiers of the Territorial Reserve. The pavement in the town is atrocious, and made my feet sore; the sun was hotter than ever; the dust, being now largely coal-dust, was more unpleasant than before. We halted for a few minutes just beyond the bridge over the railway, where British troops were unloading guns from long lines of trucks. When I turned from watching the station I found that my platoon had got mixed up with a lot of French reservists, and that an unofficial and very dangerous rifle inspection was taking place, which was fortunately cut short by the order to "Fall in" coming down from the head of the column. Shortly after crossing the railway the road turns sharply to the right, past an antiquated bastion, reminiscent of Vauban; by the roadside is a finger-post pointing to Belgium. What we saw on rounding the corner was strange, and at first inexplicable: it was as if a tornado had visited the spot. Where a row of cottages had been was now a shapeless mass of ruins. The ground was covered with huge trees lying across each other, the branches fresh and green, the roots broken and torn as if by some high explosive. The French had been clearing a field of fire. Beyond the entanglement of the fallen trees a network of barbed wire was being laid on a depth of some two hundred yards. About two miles out of the town we passed the trench, of which rumour had reached us at our first billets. At Taisnières we had heard that 15,000 people were digging trenches in front of Maubeuge! The trench, deep and broad, stretched away on both sides of the road as far as the eye could see, and probably encircled the whole of Maubeuge. The road itself was blocked by barbed-wire entanglements, a space being left in the middle wide enough for the passage of a single cart. In a wood some few hundred yards behind the line of defence was a very cleverly-hidden field fortification, in which, no doubt, some of the famous 75 mm. guns were concealed.