CHAPTER XIX[ToC]
Holland at Last
"No Intern"—Real Bread—Tipperary—A Real Time—The Splendid Hollanders—The Hague.
The diary summarizes the later events of that day:
"September tenth: Fine weather and in Holland. All our troubles are over. We struck a small town called Alboom where the people did everything they could for us. Plenty of food. Slept in a house!"
A man smoking a big pipe and wearing baggy breeches and wooden shoes came up and surveyed us with kindly amusement, as Simmons scraped at me with infinite gusto. He was a Hollander; not a "Dutchman." We soon learned that the latter was a term of contempt applied by the former to the Germans.
I asked him for some tobacco, which he readily gave to us from a capacious pouch. He waved his pipe at us in friendly fashion and said something which we took to be a question as to our identity.
"English," we said, and in desperation turned to our scanty stock of French: "Soldats; prisoniers."
"Engelsch!" he boomed. We nodded. He simply threw his arms round first one and then the other, so that I wiped the ashes from his pipe out of my eyes. He lumbered off and shortly returned with a counterpart of himself. He talked rapidly to his companion and waved his pipe. We made out the words "Duitsch," "Engelsch," and enough of others to know that he was telling our tale as he imagined it.
Our fears coming uppermost, we gave voice to them: "Intern?"