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Also some of them wore blue coats, red-trimmed, instead of the dull gray
service garb of the troops in the first invading columns. Indeed some
of them even wore a nondescript mixture of uniform and civilian garb.
They were Landwehr and Landsturm, troops of the third and fourth lines,
going now to police the roads and garrison the captured towns, and hold
the lines of communication open while the first line, who were picked
troops, and the second line, who were reservists, pressed ahead into
France.
They showed a childlike curiosity to see the prisoners in the box cars
behind us. They grinned triumphantly at the Frenchmen and the
Britishers, but the sight of a Turco in his short jacket and his dirty
white skirts invariably set them off in derisive cat-calling and
whooping. One beefy cavalryman in his forties, who looked the Bavarian
peasant all over, boarded our car to see what might be seen. He had
been drinking. He came nearer being drunk outright than any German
soldier I had seen to date.


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