I was startled too, but finding him quite harmless, I bade him: “Guten Abend!”[10] and, laughing, walked on.
Everywhere through this farming country I saw prisoners of war at work, often more numerous than the German laborers. Like faithful slaves in the small farmyards or like gangs of convicts on the big estates, they carried on constantly the work of the absent German men and tilled Germany’s soil. With dull and hardened faces and uniforms stained and patched until Cossack was scarcely distinguishable from chasseur, they drudged wearily on.
I was arrested by an animated scene on the rye fields of a big estate. About thirty English, French, and Russian prisoners with a sprinkling of Polish girls were harvesting and threshing the rye. The sun was scorching hot, and their faces were black with dust and perspiration as they bent over the big, relentless machine. The sole German on the scene, a fat sentry, was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, sipping a glass of beer!
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Exclamation about equal to “Good Heavens!”
[10] Good evening.
CHAPTER XII
I Encounter a Don Quixote and Fall a Victim to His Prowess
The success which I seemed to have with my civilian disguise gradually led me to assume a bolder attitude. I began to stroll nonchalantly along the main roads and even entered public houses and tobacco shops, buying cigars and bottles of beer to drink with my meals. It was this boldness which later caused my downfall.
It was the afternoon of the third day and I was resting beside that fateful thoroughfare which runs from the village of Alt Pokrent to the town of Gadebusch, when one of those dazzling creatures which belonged to the mounted German Landpolizei rode up. I had passed two of them during the day without attracting any special attention, so I hoped to be able to ignore this one and coolly lit a cigar.
I was looking the other way, but I heard tremulously as he drew up his horse. I thought of flight, but a high bank stared me in the face. I glanced timidly around. He was curling his mustache and gazing at my feet.