Now it can be Told by Philip Gibbs — Read

I came to know General Headquarters more closely when it removed, for fresher air, to Montreuil, a fine old walled town, once within sight of the sea, which ebbed over the low-lying ground below its hill, but now looking across a wide vista of richly cultivated fields where many hamlets are scattered among clumps of trees. One came to G. H. Q. from journeys over the wild desert of the battlefields, where men lived in ditches and "pillboxes," muddy, miserable in all things but spirit, as to a place where the pageantry of war still maintained its old and dead tradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be played in England before the war -- picturesque, romantic, utterly unreal. It was as though men were playing at war here, while others sixty miles away were fighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and explosive barrages.

An "open sesame," by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside, sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the occupants of any motorcar, sure that more staff-officers were going in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God. Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonels and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hatbands, red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went with them on their way.