There was ample time now to cover the remaining distance, and so I rested a moment before what appeared to be a deserted house.  Slowly the shutters were pushed back and a sweet-faced old lady timorously thrust her head out of an upper window.  She apparently had been hiding away terror-stricken, and there was something pathetic in the half-trusting way she risked her fate even now.  In a low voice she put some question in the local patois to me.  I could not understand what she was asking, but concluded that she was seeking comfort and assurance.  So I sought to convey by much gesturing and benevolent smiling that all was quiet and safe along the Meuse.  She may have concluded that I was some harmless, roaming idiot who could not answer a plain question; but it was the best I could do, and I walked on to Vise with the fine feeling of having played the role of comforter.

At Vise I was heartened by two dogs who jumped wildly and joyously around me.  I gathered courage enough here to swerve to the right, and from the window of a still burning roadside cafe extracted three wine-glasses as souvenirs of the trip.

Presently I was in Mouland, whose few forlorn walls grouped about the village church made a pathetic picture as they glowed luminously in the setting sun.  A flock of doves were cooing in the blackened ruins.  Now I was on the home-stretch; and, that there might be no mistake with my early morning comrades, I cried out in German, “Here comes a friend!” With broad smiles on their faces, they were waiting there to receive me.

They made a not unpicturesque group gathered around their camp-fire.  One was plucking a chicken, another making the straw beds for the night.  A third was laboriously at work writing a post-card.  I ventured the information that I had made over fifty kilometers that day.  They punctured my pride somewhat by stating that that was often the regular stint for German soldiers.  But, pointing to their own well-made hobnailed boots, they added, “Never in thin rubber soles like yours.”  After emptying my pockets of eatables and promising to deliver the post-card, I passed once more under the great Dutch banner into neutral territory.

My three Holland friends were there with an automobile, and, greeting me with a hearty “Gute Knabe!” whisked me off to Maastricht.  For the next three days I did all my writing in bed, nursing a, couple of bandaged feet.  I wouldn’t have missed that trip for ten thousand dollars.  I wouldn’t go through it again for a hundred thousand.

Part 3 With the War Photographers in Belgium

Chapter IX

How I Was Shot As A German Spy

In the last days of September, the Belgians moving in and through Ghent in their rainbow-colored costumes, gave to the city a distinctively holiday touch.  The clatter of cavalry hoofs and the throb of racing motors rose above the voices of the mobs that surged along the streets.