At the table sat two officers--high
officers, I judged--writing busily. Their stiff white cuff-ends showed
below their coat-sleeves; their slim black boots were highly polished,
and altogether they had the look of having just escaped from the hands
of a valet. Between them and the frowsy privates was a gulf a thousand
miles wide and a thousand miles deep.
When I woke again it was broad daylight and we had crossed the border
and were in Germany. At small way stations women and girls wearing long
white aprons and hospital badges came under the car windows with hot
drinks and bacon sandwiches for the wounded. They gave us some, too,
and, I think, bestowed what was left upon the prisoners at the rear. We
ran now through a land untouched by war, where prim farmhouses stood in
prim gardens. It was Sunday morning and the people were going to church
dressed in their Sunday best. Considering that Germany was supposed to
have been drained of its able-bodied male adults for war-making purposes
we saw, among the groups, an astonishingly large number of men of
military age.
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