We had made this journey and now the hour was seven in the evening, and
we were dining in the big hall of the Prefecture as the guests of His
Excellency, Field Marshal von Heeringen, commanding the Seventh Army of
the German Kaiser--dining, I might add, from fine French plates, with
smart German orderlies for waiters.
Except us five, and one other, the twenty-odd who sat about the great
oblong table were members of the Over-General's staff. We five were
Robert J. Thompson, American consul at Aix-la-Chapelle; McCutcheon and
Bennett, of the Chicago Tribune; Captain Alfred Mannesmann, of the
great German manufacturing firm of Mannesmann Mulag; and myself. The
one other was a Berlin artist, by name Follbehr, who having the run of
the army, was going out daily to do quick studies in water colors in the
trenches and among the batteries. He did them remarkably well, too,
seeing that any minute a shell might come and spatter him all over his
own drawing board. All the rest, though, were generals and colonels and
majors, and such--youngish men mostly.
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