Since we passed, a few hours before, another car had been wrecked by the road. One sees these cars everywhere, lying on their sides, turned turtle in ditches, bent and twisted against trees. No one seems to be hurt in these accidents; at least one hears nothing of them, if they are. And now we were back at Poperinghe again.
The Commandant had his headquarters in the house of a notary. Except in one instance, all the houses occupied by the headquarters' staffs that I visited were the houses of notaries. Perhaps the notary is the important man of a French town. I do not know.
This was a double house with a centre hall, a house of some pretension in many ways. But it had only one lamp. When we went from one room to another we took the lamp with us. It was not even a handsome lamp. In that very comfortable house it was one of the many anomalies of war.
One or two of the best things from the museum at Ypres had been secured and brought back here. On a centre table was a bronze equestrian statue in miniature of a Crusader, a beautiful piece of work.
While we were waiting for coffee the Commandant opened the lower drawer of a secretary and took out a letter.
"This may interest Madame," he said. "I have just received it. It is from General Leman, the hero of Liège."
He held it close to the lamp and read it. I have the envelope before me now. It is addressed in lead pencil and indorsed as coming from General Leman, Prisoner of War at Magdeburg, Germany.
The letter was a soldier's simple letter, written to a friend. I wish I had made a copy of it; but I remember in effect what it said. Clearly the hero of Liège has no idea that he is a hero. He said he had a good German doctor, but that he had been very ill. It is known, of course, that his foot was injured during the destruction of one of the fortresses just before he was captured.
"I have a very good German doctor," he wrote. "But my foot gives me a great deal of trouble. Gangrene set in and part of it had to be amputated. The wound refuses to heal, and in addition my heart is bad."
He goes on to ask for his family, for news of them, especially of his daughter. I saw this letter in March. He had been taken a prisoner the previous August. He had then been seven or eight months without news of his family.