"Will you see our museum?" said a tall officer, who spoke beautiful
English. His mother was an Englishwoman. So I was taken into another
room and shown various relics of the battlefield--pieces of shells,
rifles and bullets.
"Early German shells," said the officer who spoke English, "were like
this. You see how finely they splintered. The later ones are not so
good; the material is inferior, and here is an aluminum nose which
shows how scarce copper is becoming in Germany to-day."
I have often thought of that visit to the "chateau," of the beautiful
courtesy of those Belgian officers, their hospitality, their eagerness
to make an American woman comfortable and at home. And I was to have
still further proof of their kindly feeling, for when toward daylight
I came back from the trenches they were still up, the lamps were still
burning brightly, the stove was red hot and cheerful, and they had
provided food for us against the chill of the winter dawn. Out through
the mud and into the machine again. And now we were very near the
trenches. The car went without lights and slowly. A foot off the
centre of the road would have made an end to the excursion.
We began to pass men, long lines of them standing in the drenching
rain to let us by. They crowded close against the car to avoid the
seas of mud.
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