Ingelmünster, November, 1914.
In Fosses, near Namur, I happened to be the only physician in the
place, as all the doctors had fled. So it came about that the first
prescriptions that I have ever written were in the French language. It
was rather odd, but it went. The sixty-five-year-old apothecary and I
have opened many good bottles of Burgundy in his bachelor apartment
while he told of his student days in Geneva and Brussels; I of Germany
and its glories.
One time I was called to a village an hour distant to the help of a
young mother. And it may have presented a curious and unforgettable
spectacle to the Belgian peasants when after two hours' hard work the
"_jeune docteur Allemand_," shirt-sleeved, armed and girt with a woman's
apron, presented the young mother with a tiny, howling Belgian, while
outside the guns thundered in the distance, killing perhaps hundreds
and hundreds of other Belgians.