I preserve a memory which is just as vivid
of certain things I saw in a big institution in Laon. Although in
German hands, and nominally under German control, the building was given
over entirely to crippled and ailing French prisoners. These patients
were minded and fed by their own people and attended by captured French
surgeons. In our tour of the place I saw only two men wearing the
German gray. One was the armed sentry who stood at the gate to see that
no recovering inmate slipped out, and the other was a German surgeon-
general who was making his daily round of inspection of the hospitals
and had brought us along with him. Of the native contingent the person
who appeared to be in direct charge was a handsome, elderly lady,
tenderly solicitous of the frowziest Turco in the wards and exquisitely
polite, with a frozen politeness, to the German officer. When he
saluted her she bowed to him deeply and ceremoniously and silently. I
never thought until then that a bow could be so profoundly executed and
yet so icily cold.
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