I think of it
yet-often.
Chapter 11
War de Luxe
"I think," said a colonel of the ordnance department as we came out into
the open after a good but a hurried and fly-ridden breakfast--"I think,"
he said in his excellent Saxonized English, "that it would be as well to
look at our telephone exchange first of all. It perhaps might prove of
some small interest to you." With that he led the way through a jumble
of corridors to a far corner of the Prefecture of Laon, perching high on
the Hill of Laon and forming for the moment the keystone of the arch of
the German center. So that was how the most crowded day in a reasonably
well-crowded newspaperman's life began for me--with a visit to a room
which had in other days been somebody's reception parlor. We came upon
twelve soldier-operators sitting before portable switchboards with metal
transmitters clamped upon their heads, giving and taking messages to and
from all the corners and crannies of the mid-battle-front. This little
room was the solar plexus of the army.
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