It was declared that the only German paying for anything during the whole of the fortnight's occupation was a member of the Hohenzollern family, an important officer who had made the Hôtel d'Univers his headquarters.
I decided to pass on to Vitry-en-Artois, twelve miles distant and six kilometers from Douai, where I had heard the Allies were in force. Here I obtained a room in a hotel.
Within a short while I saw armed cars. There came many warriors in many cars, cars fitted with mitrailleuses, cars advancing backward, cars with two soldiers in the back of each with their rifles rested on the back cushions and their fingers on the triggers, and with the muzzles of mitrailleuses pointing over their heads. Several cavalry scouts, too, are in the streets.
Once I ventured my head a little outside of the door and was curtly warned to eliminate myself or possibly I would get shot. I eliminated myself for the moment.
Now with dramatic suddenness death touches Vitry with her chill fingers. In the distance, right away beyond the bridge behind a bend in the road, there is a clatter of hoofs. It stops. Again it goes on and stops for about a couple of minutes, and then quite distinctly can be heard the sound of a body of horsemen proceeding at a walk.
The cavalry scouts have vanished into big barns on either side of the road, and around the corner of the bridge comes a small body of German cavalry. They have passed the spot where the French scouts are hidden and I have retreated to my bedroom window, from where I can count twelve of the Death's Head riders.
They are riding to their fate. Right slap up in front of the cars they come. A rifle shot rings out from where the French scouts are hidden, then another, and that is the signal for the inferno to be loosed.
C-r-r-r-r-r-ack, and the mitrailleuse spits out a regular hail of death, vicious, whiplike, never-ceasing cracks. Two horses are down and three men lie prone in the road.
The Germans have not fired a shot, all their energies being concentrated in wildly turning their horses to get back again round the bend.
It is too late. Another two are toppled over by the scouts in the barns, and then cars are after them, still spitting out an unending hail of lead.