Manhay seems alive with soldiers. Generals, colonels of cavalry
regiments and all kinds of magnificently uniformed beings whose precise
rank in the military scale I am too ignorant to determine, are riding
or driving up in motor-cars, some from Vaux Chavannes, others from the
direction of Vielsalm. They look so spruce and smart, especially a
colonel of Hussars in a head-dress resembling a diminutive brown busby,
who calls out orders in a deep, bass voice.
A whole team of horses is picketed in the village street, splendid
horses too. They are pawing the ground and neighing, longing to be off.
They will get their fill of battle soon enough, poor beasts! Their
pastors and masters confer at the street corner. They look picturesque
in their long blue military coats. A protective guard of honour is
massed in front of the Gendarmerie door.
Waves of excitement pass over us. A great personage is here. He drives
up in a beautiful car with an attaché whose banded grey-blue coat fits
to perfection. The horses are brought along. The mysterious General
(the soldiers speak of him with bated breath) mounts. His long blue
cloak, with its scarlet facings, falls gracefully round him. He holds
the reins in his well-gloved hands.
The entire staff, headed by the General, takes up its position
in a semicircular sweep at the corner of the street opposite the
Gendarmerie. The officers look the picture of arrogance. How I hate
them! We all crane our necks out of the window. The army is advancing!
Already they are coming round the bend of the road. We can see them as
they pass the corner by the château. At first the soldiers scarcely
detach themselves from the firwoods. Then they seem to be marching on
us in one solid block.
Few civilians get the chance to see an army, alien or otherwise,
marching down to battle. The sight is piteous, thrilling. The
imaginative must visualise ahead so many rotting corpses instead of
those lithe, strong men. Personality seems lacking in that endless
procession which comes streaming down the road with faces grey as their
dust-laden clothes, mechanical in their movements as so many clock-work
figures. Yet they look efficient, happy, fit.
A great ceremonial follows. The General of this vast army shakes
hands with the colonel of each regiment, salutes the captains and
lieutenants, and says some kindly word or two to each line of
on-marching men. It is wonderful to see the spirit his cheery phrases
put into their tired frames. They are no longer the envy of admiring
women on Potsdam parade, these men with sweating faces and stiff limbs,
but they are in good fettle none the less. One company has half a
cigarette and the men pass it from hand to hand along the line so that
each may have a whiff.
The soldiers are all jabbering away, odds and ends of Teuton
witticisms, too colloquial for me to understand, interspersed with a
fire of pleasantry at the expense of the peasants. They break out at
intervals into snatches of song, winding up with the inevitable “Wacht
am Rhein” and “Deutschland über alles.”
Although they do not march in step, “_les Prussiens_” advance in
such close formation that each little company looks like one huge
Falstaffian figure. The solidity of their Wellington boots is in good
contrast to the colossal blunder of the pickelhauben, the spiky metal
helmets covering their close-cropped heads.
The Kaiserliche regiment is here, dapper Hussars, regiment upon
regiment of infantry, also the Brandenburgers, well-mounted, grim of
feature, with their shoulder straps buttoned over to hide the Imperial
crown and embroidered N. of their Colonel-Czar. Here are some of the
Landwehr, too, homely, honest men who would far rather be working at
their civilian tasks.
The troops greet the General as they pass him by with great bursts
of “hoch” or “grüsz” rising in tempestuous outcries from myriads
of dust-dried throats. They are irrepressibly gay and certain of
themselves, but I think they are putting a good deal of faith in those
devastating guns which went through in the silence of the night....