It's queer how you can, in a few minutes, learn the tastes and habits of a man in a place like this. The Colonel is religious. There is a crucifix fastened to the burlap over my head. The Colonel must sleep on this bench. At the ends of his shelf, I see two other crucifixes, and there, standing on the top of a box of cigars, is a colored print, a Station of the Cross. I begin to know the Colonel better than if I had observed him for months in his Bavarian home. As I gaze at him now, bending over the map, that in his preoccupation he has pushed farther across the table, the lamp's yellow glow shows me his face in relief against the shadowed walls. It is a strong face, and kind; the chin is grim and square, but the eyes are big and gentle, grayish though, the color of a fighter. The gray mustache almost hides it, but reveals enough of the full mouth of one who is not ascetic. As for the crucifixes and the picture; they belong to the eyes. A seasoned man, the Colonel.
With a nervous start, that seems incongruous with his broad shoulders, the Colonel looks up. Then, appearing suddenly to remember something, he pushes the map towards me. I see it is a map of his position.
"There," he says, running his finger the length of a broken line in the upper right hand corner, "are the French trenches." "There," and he points to lines paralleling them, "is our position. Here," and his finger travels down the map, to rest on a group of oblongs and squares, "is where we are now. This unterstand," and he makes a mark beside the smallest square, "was dug next to the shed where the farmer kept his wagons. This place is known as...." Were I to name this place, it would, upon publication, be cabled to France, and telephoned out to the French artillery positions. "Now," and the Colonel smiles and runs his finger along a thick blue line that makes an angle and then disappears at the lower end of the map, "that is the road by which you came from Houthem, and at this point you were fired upon. Notice the curve that the French trenches make. From the extremity of that trench," and the Colonel indicates an imaginary line sweeping a section of the road, "it is not a thousand meters, easy for a sharpshooter."
"And that," I laugh, and I'm trying to make this gaiety real, "is the point that we don't care about crossing when we return."
"Can we not go back by some other road," Poole suggests, "a longer way, making a detour?"
The Colonel shakes his head with a reluctant smile.
I hear then the same buzzing that I heard in the kitchen at Brigade headquarters. And from the top of a varnished box, on the floor where I had not seen it, the Adjutant picks up a telephone. "Hier ist Siebzehn Bayrischer Regiment," he calls, and hands the instrument across the table to the Colonel. "Hier ist Oberst Meyer," says the Colonel, "Ja ... Jawohl ... Adieu." With a chuckle, he turns to us. "That was Hauptmann Kliewer," he explains, "telephoning from Houthem. Somebody must have told him there about the road. He was rather concerned for you, but I assured him that you were about to take dinner."
Feebly we try to protest. But the Colonel insists that we'll have to eat with him, and we all feel guilty and self-conscious. It's just like these Germans to share their black bread and army wurst with us. But this is the firing line; this bombproof is only eight hundred meters from the French trenches, and every scrap of food must count. An electric torch flashes on the wall outside the door; some one is coming down. A black mustached, young Bavarian comes in, and picking up the varnished box, which I now see sprouts with vine-like wires that climb up the wall and out under the roof, he carries the telephone away. The door opens again and another private comes in. Clicking his heels in a salute, he bows low from the waist, and then announces dinner. In bewilderment we look at each other and follow the Colonel up the earthen stairs.
"I always dine," Colonel Meyer seems to be apologizing, "in the farmhouse."
Overhead a stray bullet whistles, and I hear it rattling through the dried tops of the trees.