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Updated: May 22, 2025
For days they tramped the roads until they were all dusty and bedraggled and footsore, but glad to be getting farther away from that tide of field-gray men which had now swamped over Lille. The young husband comforted his wife. "Courage!" he said. "I have money enough to carry us through the war. We will set up a little shop somewhere."
Those field-gray men had to wade through a Slough of Despond to get to their line, and at night by Hooge where the lines were close together only a few yards apart our men could hear their boots squelching in the mud with sucking, gurgling noises. "They're drinking soup again!" said our humorists. There, at Hooge, Germans and English talked to one another, out of their common misery.
The Germans appreciating the value of this position had launched twenty counterattacks against it in the ten previous days. It proved to them the bloodiest spot in all this war-ravaged region, and when the British advanced at early dawn on the 23d, thousands of dead in field-gray uniforms littered the approaches to the position. During the day the British took over 1,500 prisoners.
All day long innumerable trains rolled southward along that line, and every train was packed with soldiers in field-gray their cheerful, stolid bullet-heads stuck out of all the windows. "Why so many soldiers," I asked, "and where are they all going?" My Luxembourg friends laughed. "Yes, yes," they said. "That is it. Trier has a splendid climate for soldiers. The situation is kolossal for that!"
When we passed through the hot and dusty little city it was simply swarming with the field-gray ones thousands upon thousands of them new barracks everywhere; parks of artillery; mountains of munitions and military stores. It was a veritable base of operation, ready for war.
In any case the topic was very successful. Mr. Saffron embraced it with eagerness; with much animation he discussed the merits, whether practical or decorative, of various uniforms field-gray, khaki, horizon blue, Air Force blue, and a dozen others worn by various armies, corps, and services.
They were now, thanks to their treaty, both dry clad in the field-gray uniforms of the German rank and file; and though they felt somewhat strange in these habiliments they enjoyed a feeling of security, especially in view of the populated district they must pass through.
Crowds gazed upon the bulletin boards and tried to picture the steady advance of German field-gray through the streets of Liège, asked their neighbors what were these French 75's, and endeavored to locate Mons and Verdun on inadequate maps. Interest could not be more intense, but it was the interest of the moving-picture devotee.
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