So at last I found out at second hand what one German soldier had done
to merit the bestowal of the Iron Cross. But as we came away, I was in
doubt on a certain point and, for that matter, am still in doubt on it:
I am in doubt as to which of two men most fitly typified the spirit of
the German Army in this war--the general feeding his men by thousands
into the maw of destruction because it was an order, or the
pot-wrestling private soldier, the camp cook, going to death with a
coffee boiler in his hands--because it was an order.




Chapter 9

Viewing A Battle from a Balloon


She was anchored to earth in a good-sized field. Woods horizoned the
field on three of its edges and a sunken road bounded it on the fourth.
She measured, I should say at an offhand guess, seventy-five feet from
tip to tip lengthwise, and she was perhaps twenty feet in diameter
through her middle. She was a bright yellow in color--a varnished,
oily-looking yellow--and in shape suggestive of a frankfurter.

At the end of her near the ground and on the side that was underneath
--for she swung, you understand, at an angle--a swollen protuberance
showed, as though an air bubble had got under the skin of the sausage
during the packing and made a big blister. She drooped weakly
amidships, bending and swaying this way and that; and, as we came under
her and looked up, we saw that the skin of the belly kept shrinking in