Sergeant Reid, who did not seem to realize how desperate the situation was, was asking Major Bing-Hall what he was going to do. But before any more could be said, the Germans were swarming over the trench. The officer in charge of them gave us a chance to surrender, which we did, and then it seemed like a hundred voices—harsh, horrible voices—called to us to come out of the trench. "Raus" is the word they use, pronounced "rouse."
This was the first German word I had heard, and I hated it. It is the word they use to a dog when they want him to go out, or to cattle they are chasing out of a field. It is used to mean either "Come out!"—or "Get out!" I hated it that day, and I hated it still more afterward.
There were about twenty of us altogether, and we climbed out of the trench without speaking. There was nothing to be said. It was all up with us.
CHAPTER II
THROUGH BELGIUM
It is strange how people act in a crisis. I mean, it is strange how quiet they are, and composed. We stood there on the top of the trench, without speaking, although I knew what had happened to us was bitterer far than to be shot. But there was not a word spoken. I remember noticing Fred McKelvey, when the German who stood in front of him told him to take off his equipment. Fred's manner was halting, and reluctant, and he said, as he laid down his rifle and unbuckled his cartridge bag, "This is the thing my father told me never to let happen."
Just then the German who stood by me said something to me, and pointed to my equipment, but I couldn't unfasten a buckle with my useless arm, so I asked him if he couldn't see I was wounded. He seemed to understand what I meant, and unbuckled my straps and took everything off me, very gently, too, and whipped out my bandage and was putting it on my shoulder with considerable skill, I thought, and certainly with a gentle hand—when the order came from their officer to move us on, for the shells were falling all around us.
Unfortunately for me, my guard did not come with us, nor did I ever see him again. One of the others reached over and took my knife, cutting the string as unconcernedly as if I wanted him to have it, and I remember that this one had a saw-bayonet on his gun, as murderous and cruel-looking a weapon as any one could imagine, and he had a face to match it, too. So in the first five minutes I saw the two kinds of Germans.
When we were out of the worst of the shell-fire, we stopped to rest, and, a great dizziness coming over me, I sat down with my head against a tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that drifted across the sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant an afternoon as I can ever remember. But the calmness of the sky, with its deep blue distance, seemed to shrivel me up into nothing. The world was so bright, and blue, and—uncaring!