Some of the Frenchmen on board were not wounded seriously enough to prevent their getting down on the roadway; and you may be sure they were not ashamed of their plaster patches and bandaged arms.
There were about 300 German prisoners in the train. We got glimpses of them lying in the straw on the floor in the dark interior of the big trucks. I got on the footboard and looked into the open door of one car. Fifteen men were stretched upon straw, and two soldiers stood guard over them, rifle in hand. They all seemed in a state of extreme exhaustion. Some were asleep, others were eating large chunks of bread.
In the middle of the car a young soldier who spoke French fairly well told me that the German losses during the last three days had been enormous; and then, stopping suddenly, he said:
"Would it be possible, Sir, to get a little water for my fellows and myself?"
"Certainly," I replied; and a man belonging to the station, who was passing with a jug, said at once that he would run and get some. The prisoner thanked me and added with a sigh:
"They are very good fellows here."
One jocular French guard had put on a spiked helmet which he was keeping as a trophy, and, so much does the habit make the man, he now looked uncannily like a German himself.
As we passed through the villages to the northeast the contrast between abandoned houses and gardens rioting with the color of roses and dahlias and fruit-laden trees struck us like a blow.
In Gourchamp a number of houses had been burned, and the neighboring fields showed that there had been fighting there; but it was Courtacon which presented the most grievous spectacle. Eighteen of its two dozen houses had been completely destroyed by fire. The walls were partly standing, but the floors and contents of the rooms were completely buried under the débris of roofs that had fallen in. In a little Post Office the telegraphic and telephonic instruments had been smashed. Just opposite is a small building including the office of the Mayor and the village school. The outside of the building and the outhouses were littered with the straw on which the Uhlans had slept. In the Mayor's office the drawers and cupboards had been broken open, and their contents had been scattered with the remnants of meals on the floor.
But it is a scene in a little village school that will longest remain in my memory. The low forms, the master's desk, and the blackboard stand today as they did on July 25, which was no doubt the last day before the Summer vacation, as it was also the last week before the outbreak of the war. On the walls the charts remained which reminded these little ones daily that "Alcohol is the enemy," and had summoned them to follow the path of kindness, justice, and truth. The windows were smashed, broken cartridge cases lay about with wings of birds and other refuse. Near the door I saw chalked up, evidently in German handwriting, "Parti Paris," ("Left for Paris.")