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Hence Andreas Hofer, though his heart yearned for it, had refrained from making his solemn entrance into Innspruck, and had gone on the 17th of April to Meran, where he was to review the Landsturm of that town and its environs, the brave men who were to accompany him on his expedition to the Italian Tyrol.
The standing army was increased: to each regiment were appended troops of volunteers, Joegers, composed of young men belonging to the higher classes, who furnished their own equipments: a numerous Landwehr, a sort of militia, was, as in Austria, raised besides the standing army, and measures were even taken to call out, in case of necessity, the heads of families and elderly men remaining at home, under the name of the Landsturm.
But there was nothing to see on the German side but half a dozen sentries in the field-grey I had hunted at Loos. An under-officer, with the black-and-gold button of the Landsturm, hoicked us out of the train, and we were all shepherded into a big bare waiting-room where a large stove burned. They took us two at a time into an inner room for examination.
There is another which you may not have heard of a small boy who put on grandfather's spectacles, a pillow under his coat, and a card on his cap, 'Officer of the Landsturm. The conquerors had enough sense not to interfere with the battalion which was taking Paris; but the pseudo-Landsturm officer was chased into a doorway and got a cuff after his placard was taken away from him.
"Call me Bertha," she said as condescendingly as a duchess of Versailles might have spoken to a handsome abbot seated at her feet. Her husband, also protested upon hearing Desnoyers call him "Counsellor," like his compatriots. "My friends," he said, "call me 'Captain. I command a company of the Landsturm."
Through their uniforms he will recognize the farmer, the artisan, the factory hand, the slim young volunteer, the genial 'Landwehr' or 'Landsturm' man, the teacher, schoolboy, student, clerk, and professional soldier. "Before them stretches a new country. Broader plains, lower ranges of hills than in Galicia. To the right and left, as far as the eye reaches, fields, meadows, and swamps.
It is an evening late in autumn. The tattoo has just sounded. All is quiet. From afar comes the sound of heavy guns, as if huge dogs were baying underground. Some young wounded officers are enjoying the peace of the evening. Three of them are talking gaily with two ladies. The fourth, a Landsturm lieutenant, in civil life a well-known composer, sits gloomily apart.
He could see the rotund figure of the Landsturm sentry being heckled; the figure of the blustering sergeant who had cross-examined him so fiercely, and had well-nigh frightened him out of his senses; and before them a third individual a shorter, shrivelled-up officer, risen from the ranks undoubtedly that one who had leapt into the tunnel and had gone scrambling along to discover what steps had been taken by the prisoners to break out of the camp.
Those who are not found strong enough for military service are divided into three grades, of which one is dismissed as unfit; a second is excused from training and enrolled in the Landsturm; while a third, whose physical defects are minor and perhaps temporary, is told off to a supplementary reserve, of which some members receive a short training.
The train crawling out of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting: "One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words at short intervals.
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