noon
And people -- _ especially _ people -- like himself . Solid columns of men , marching as fast as they could step -- there were n't trucks enough to haul them all . That road had been crowded -- jammed . Like State and Madison at noon , only more so . Over-jammed with all the personnel , all the instrumentation and incidentalia , all the weaponry , of war . And upon that teeming , seething highway there had descended a rain of steel-encased high explosive . Possibly some gas , but probably not .