MAPS AND MINES
Oneday I ask the Cuirassier why he has no markings on his shoulder straps. He coughs, blushes, then unbuttons one and turns it back to show a large N. surmounted by an Imperial crown embroidered in blood red.
“The Czar was our Colonel, Fräulein,” he says, in the horrified accents usually reserved for the mention of the Prince of Darkness.
The fact does not seem to me so awful. I hide a smile.
“Many of the men tore the straps off their uniforms before they would go on active service,” he says seriously.
I ask him why he is such friends with the swashbuckler.
“One does not choose one’s comrades in war-time, Fräulein.”
He brings out a map which seems to have every fir tree and blade of grass in the country accurately described on it and draws his finger along the page until he comes to Namur.
“The French have blown up every bridge over the Meuse.” He indicates the length of the river between Namur and Liège. “We shall build them again.” He goes on to tell me facts about the countryside which I thought only the peasants knew.
The network of patrols with which Germans enmesh the country so far in advance of the body of the army, seems to have done its work well.
I translate to the Job family, who listen amazed.
The Cuirassier tries to pump me, very deftly, very innocently.
“Have you heard anything of the number of French in Namur. Have they been strengthening the defences there during the last two weeks. Is it true that their food supply is inadequate to the needs of the town?”
It is amazing how obtuse I suddenly become. I forgot that the Job-Lepouses have dinned into my brain for the past fortnight the pleasing legend that a hundred and forty thousand Frenchmen, not to speak of Belgians, are defending Namur, and that every other tree in the country side has been cut down to pile up barricades. I swear I have no knowledge of the (possiblytrue) assertion that theavant-gardeof the French troops, two hundred men and officers, are at Laroche. I am duller witted all of a sudden than the village idiot who has, by the way, refuted the charge of idiotcy by keeping mostly to the fields since the Germans came.