"Do you ever speak to the German prisoners?" I asked the soldier.
"Oh, yes," said the youngster; "some of them speak English, and they say 'Hello' to me and I say 'Hello' back to them. I feel sorry for them."
The little soldier looked at the shabby procession again and then he leaned over to me confidentially and said with great earnestness as if he had made up the phrase on the spot: "You know I have no quarrel with the German people."
When we got home after our trips to the artillery camps we found an old man in a French uniform eagerly waiting to see us. He told us that he was an American, and more than that, a Californian. His name was George La Messneger and he was sixty-seven years old. He was French by birth and had fought in the Franco-Prussian war, but the next year he went to California and lived in Los Angeles until the outbreak of the great war. Although more than sixty, La Messneger was accepted by a French recruiting officer and he was in Verdun two weeks after he arrived in France. Three days later he was wounded and when we met him he had added to his adventures by winning a promotion to sous-lieutenant and gaining the croix de guerre and the medaille militaire.
Old George came to be a frequent visitor, but though we urged him on he would never tell us much about the war. He wanted to talk about California.
"I tell the men in my regiment," George would begin, "that out in Los Angeles we cut alfalfa five times a year, but they won't believe me."
Gently we tried to lead George back to the war and his experiences. "How did you get the military medal, lieutenant?" somebody asked.
"Oh, that was at Verdun," replied the old man.
"It must have been pretty hot up there," said another correspondent.
"Yes," said George, and he began to muse. We imagined that he was thinking of those hot days in February when all the guns, big and little, were turned loose.