Germans. By repeatedly proclaiming the everlasting friendship of
Germany and America, and passing out some chocolate, I made
good friends on the home base. They charged me only not to
return after sundown, giving point to their advice by relating how,
on the previous night, they had shot down a peasant woman and
her two children who, under the cloak of darkness, sought to
scurry past the sentinels. They told this with a genuine note of grief
in their voices. So, with a hearty hand-shake and wishes for the
best of luck, they waved adieu to me as I went swinging out on the
highroad to Liege.




Chapter VI

In The Black Wake Of The War



A half mile and I came for the first time actually face to face with
the wastage of war. There was what once was Mouland, the little
village I had seen burning the night before. The houses stood
roofless and open to the sky, like so many tombstones over a
departed people. The whitewashed outer walls were all shining in
the morning sun. Inside they were charred black, or blazing yet
with coals from the fire still slowly burning its way through wood
and plaster. Here and there a house had escaped the torch.

By some miracle in the smashed window of one of these houses a