United States or Norway ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were writing materials, stacks of paper, and documents at every place. Sheets and sheets of paper were covered with their handwriting. Only in front of von Heeringen were the sheets blank, for he never makes a note of anything, carrying everything in his marvelous memory.
As rapidly as he could, to General von Zwehl, meant but one thing to get there! He collected 9,000 reserve troops, which was almost immediately swelled by another 9,000, and with a total of 18,000 troops he started his siege trains for the town of Laon, where Field Marshal von Heeringen had taken up his headquarters.
While they ran over their papers, saving necessary scraps, I stood back from the table. It was characteristic of the men that Winston Churchill should have taken the most voluminous notes, while Heeringen had not put down a line. I then gathered up every scrap of paper left on the table blotters, little note pads, foolscap used or unused. Everything was to go into the fire.
It was so in this instance, as it has been so in many instances before and since. The courteous gentlemen who sat at my right side and at my left spoke in German or French or English as the occasion suited, while old Von Heeringen boomed away in rumbling German phrases. As I ate I studied him.
Crossing the Aisne by the old ford of Berry-au-Bac, a powerful army under the direct leadership of Field Marshal von Heeringen debouched upon the open country between Berry-au-Bac and Suippes, east of Rheims.
The German Crown Prince led an army farther east, advancing toward the Meuse. The Crown Prince of Bavaria commanded the German forces farther south toward Nancy, and General von Heeringen was engaged in repulsing French attacks on Alsace-Lorraine, in the region of the Vosges mountains, where the French had met with early successes.
Controlled and directed by the War Lord in person through the Chef des Grossen General Stabs, in my time General Field Marshal von Heeringen, this immense machine, the pulsing brain of a fighting force of four and half a millions of men, is composed of from 180 to 200 officials.
A very young man, with the markings of a captain on shoulder and collar, came in and went up to General von Heeringen and showed him something something that looked like a very large and rather ornamental steel coal scuttle which had suffered from a serious personal misunderstanding with an ax.
They have the same aquiline features, tall, thin, dried-up body, the same taciturn disposition, even to their hobbies Moltke being an incessant chess player, Heeringen using every one of his spare moments to play with lead soldiers.
Kitchener was in his robust sixties, with a breast like a barrel; Von Heeringen was in his shrinking, drying-up seventies, and his broad shoulders had already begun to fold in on his ribs and his big black eyes to retreat deeper into his skull. One was beaky-nosed, hatchet-headed, bearded; the other was broad-faced and shaggily mustached.
Word Of The Day