15 BBC Richard Dimbleby By A French Road

We're standing in the pouring rain at the side of a French road. A road sculpting with mud and lined right away over the plains of the Fraschai Line with the inevitable double row of poplars.

It's a grey, cold, dismal day. A few lorries only are splashing by to and from the forward areas. But coming down the road towards us is a battalion that I know to be of a famous Irish record.

They're marching in threes and in their full battle-person kit, They blend with the dripping green grass of the roadside and the brown of the hazelands. As they pass us on that road, with their brown capes glistening and their tins heads perched on their heads, I thought how similar this must be to pictures of the last war.

The road, the trees, the rain and the everlasting beat of feet.