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.