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Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
page 110 of 310 (35%)
We progressed onward by a process of alternate stops and starts, through
a land bearing remarkably few traces to show for its recent chastening
with sword and torch, until in the middle of the blazing hot forenoon we
came to Gembloux, which I think must be the place where all the flies in
Belgium are spawned. Here on a siding we lay all day, grilled in the
heat and pestered by swarms of the buzzing scavenger vermin, while troop
trains without number passed us, hurrying along the sentry-guarded
railway to the lower frontiers of Belgium. Every box-car door made a
frame for a group-picture of broad German faces and bulky German bodies.
Upon nearly every car the sportive passengers had lashed limbs of trees
and big clumps of field flowers. Also with colored chalks they had
extensively frescoed the wooden walls as high up as they could reach.
The commonest legend was "On to Paris," or for variety "To Paris
Direct," but occasionally a lighter touch showed itself. For example,
one wag had inscribed on a car door: "Declarations of War Received
Here," and another had drawn a highly impressionistic likeness of his
Kaiser, and under it had inscribed "Wilhelm II, Emperor of Europe."

Presently as train after train, loaded sometimes with guns or supplies
but usually with men, clanked by, it began to dawn upon us that these
soldiers were of a different physical type from the soldiers we had seen
heretofore. They were all Germans, to be sure, but the men along the
front were younger men, hard-bitten and trained down, with the face
which we had begun to call the Teutonic fighting face, whereas these men
were older, and of a heavier port and fuller fashion of countenance.
Also some of them wore blue coats, red-trimmed, instead of the dull gray
service garb of the troops in the first invading columns. Indeed some
of them even wore a nondescript mixture of uniform and civilian garb.
They were Landwehr and Landsturm, troops of the third and fourth lines,
going now to police the roads and garrison the captured towns, and hold
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