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Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury), 1876-1944

"Paths of Glory Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front"

Lying
there, in another man's bed, I felt like a burglar and I slept like an
oyster--the oyster being, as naturalists know, a most sound sleeper.
In the morning there was breakfast at the great table--the flies of the
night before being still present--with General von Heeringen inquiring
most earnestly as to how we had rested, and then going out to see to the
day's killing. Before doing so, however, he detailed the competent
Captain von Theobald and the efficient Lieutenant Giebel to serve for
the day as our guides while we studied briefly the workings of the
German war machine in the actual theater of war.
It was under their conductorship that about noon we aimed our
automobiles for the spot where, in accordance with provisions worked out
in advance, but until that moment unknown to us, we were to lunch with
another general--Von Zwehl, of the reserves. We left the hill, where the
town was, some four miles behind us, and when we had passed through two
wrecked and silent villages and through three of those strips of park
timber which Continentals call forests, we presently drew up and halted
and dismounted where a thick fringe of undergrowth, following the line
of an old and straggly thorn hedge, met the road at right angles on the
comb of a small ridge commanding a view of the tablelands to the
southward.


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