Driving to the edge of a small coppice, he dressed himself and, having taken a good look round to see that there were no Germans about, got out.
He was loath to leave the tank which had proved such a good friend to him and which, in spite of his very rudimentary knowledge of its workings, was such an excellent piece of British craftsmanship that it had not once let him down during the whole of his ninety-mile journey; but it was clear that he could not cross the river in it and so must take to his feet once more.
It was now past eight o'clock. With only about another hour of daylight to go and with his previous experience of crossing battle-fronts still fresh in his mind he felt that, dressed as a civilian, he would stand much more chance of making a safe crossing in the daytime, so having collected some of his iron rations he went through the trees to the far side of the coppice and sat down to make his evening meal.
No major action was in progress in the locality and such Germans as passed from time to time took him to be one of the innumerable homeless refugees who were wandering about the country, and after a bare glance in his direction went on. The night was warm and fine; as twilight fell he hunted round until he found a little dip in the ground which would provide a rough pillow for his head and, thoroughly tired out after his fatiguing day, soon fell into a sound sleep.
Shortly after dawn he was up again and making his way towards the river. He noticed that during the night the Germans had brought up a lot more troops and in one valley he saw a large concentration of tanks waiting to go into action, but he knew that before they could do so the German engineers would somehow have to fling a pontoon bridge over the river, which would not prove easy as the French had it under fire from the far bank.
At two points he was turned back by German sentries and, having decided against producing his German passport unless it proved absolutely necessary, he meekly submitted to their order, retracing his steps each time then making a wide semicircle which brought him back towards the river again. At the third attempt he succeeded in slipping between the German outposts and reaching the river-bank at a place where it shelved steeply and where for several hundred yards the actual water of the stream was not under observation by the Germans in his rear. Slipping off his clothes, he tied them up in a bundle and entered the water for what proved to be a short and not un-enjoyable swim, as a full four weeks of sunshine had warmed the Somme to a pleasant temperature.
On the far shore he scrambled out and, having dried himself as well as he could on his shirt, dressed again. No one challenged him and he crawled up the steep bank on his hands and knees. The second he put his head over the top a rifle cracked and a bullet whistled past his ear.
Ducking down, he lay there on the edge of the slope and began to call out as loudly as he could in French. A distant voice answered him saying that it was no good playing any of those tricks as he had better swim home to his friends; but now that he had made contact he was, for him, considering the earliness of the hour, in a most cheerful frame of mind. As he possessed a considerable mastery of French argot he told the troops ahead, in their own pet expressions, that he was not a German but a refugee from Lille; then he told them a dirty story which had been current during his last visit to Paris, and ended up his shouted monologue with the request that he might be allowed to come forward as he could tell them about the German dispositions on the other bank.
He was told to stay where he was and a few moments later a new voice called to him to advance with his open hands stretched up above his head. He promptly obeyed and walked forward into a landscape that did not appear to have a living soul in it, but when he had covered a hundred yards a poilu, who appeared to have grass growing out of his tin hat, raised his head a little and, covering him with a rifle, told him to jump down into a nearby ditch.
There were six men there in a cunningly-concealed machine-gun nest, and by a devious route one of them took him a few hundred yards further back, to Company Headquarters, where he was questioned by a morose-looking Captain.
Gregory told him what he had seen on the other side of the river and managed to convince his questioner that his slight accent was attributable to the fact that, although a Frenchman of Lille, he was of Belgian extraction. During the past fortnight there had been such an enormous number of civilians wandering about in the French battle-zone that the Army had long since given up arresting anyone against whom they had not definite grounds for suspicion, so after he had said his piece he was allowed to go, and set off across country in the direction of Nesle.
The Germans had begun their preparatory bombardment, which they were supporting with an aerial attack, so the first few miles proved dangerous going and—just as in Belgium— Gregory frequently had to take cover in the nearest ditch. At length, however, he got on to a side-road in a somewhat quieter area and was able to put his best foot forward; but by the time he was half-way to Nesle he was already regretting the loss of his tank. On him he had no credentials of any kind by which he might have persuaded the French Army to provide him with transport, neither could he use any form of personal touch such as he had employed with excellent effect when trying to induce the British General to lend him a Staff car to take him into Ostend; and apart from army vehicles the only traffic moving along the road consisted of an occasional farm-cart already appallingly overloaded with the belongings, women and children of some peasant family escaping from the battle-zone—and it was over ninety miles to Paris.
All through the long, hot morning he trudged on and it was after one o'clock before he reached Nesle.
Although the little town was crowded with both troops and civilians he managed to secure a passable meal at a small restaurant, but soon found that there was no means of getting any form of transport which would help him on his journey. Nesle was on a branch line running between Amiens and Laon, which now formed the first line of lateral communications behind the new French front. The only trains working on it were packed with troops, and even if he could have secured standing-room on one it would not have carried him any nearer Paris; so at three o'clock in the afternoon he set off to walk to Roye.
It was nearly six o'clock when he got there but, when he did, he had better luck. The station was on the direct line for Paris and a booking-clerk informed him that, although the trains were no longer running to schedule, one upon which civilians could travel would be leaving in the next hour or so. He had another snack and a bottle of red wine in the station buffet and at about half-past seven a train came in on which he managed to get a seat in a compartment that was crammed to capacity. All traffic had been entirely upset by the military requirements so the train was appallingly slow, but he stepped out on to a platform of the Gare du Nord a few minutes before ten o'clock. The journey from Dunkirk had taken him forty hours, but, all things considered, he thought that it had been remarkably good going.
He took a taxi straight to the Hotel Saint Regis in the Rue Jean Goujon, just off the Champs Elysees, where he always stayed when he was in the French capital; and when the English manager recognised his old patron in the dirty, dishevelled figure that came up to the desk to ask for a room he immediately took Gregory up to one of the delightful apartments which were so different from the ordinary hotel-bedrooms through being furnished with individual pieces many of which were antiques of considerable value.