THE MARCH PAST
Manhayseems alive with soldiers. Generals, colonels of cavalry regiments and all kinds of magnificently uniformed beings whose precise rank in the military scale I am too ignorant to determine, are riding or driving up in motor-cars, some from Vaux Chavannes, others from the direction of Vielsalm. They look so spruce and smart, especially a colonel of Hussars in a head-dress resembling a diminutive brown busby, who calls out orders in a deep, bass voice.
A whole team of horses is picketed in the village street, splendid horses too. They are pawing the ground and neighing, longing to be off. They will get their fill of battle soon enough, poor beasts! Their pastors and masters confer at the street corner. They look picturesque in their long blue military coats. A protective guard of honour is massed in front of the Gendarmerie door.
Waves of excitement pass over us. A great personage is here. He drives up in a beautiful car with an attaché whose banded grey-blue coat fitsto perfection. The horses are brought along. The mysterious General (the soldiers speak of him with bated breath) mounts. His long blue cloak, with its scarlet facings, falls gracefully round him. He holds the reins in his well-gloved hands.
The entire staff, headed by the General, takes up its position in a semicircular sweep at the corner of the street opposite the Gendarmerie. The officers look the picture of arrogance. How I hate them! We all crane our necks out of the window. The army is advancing!
Already they are coming round the bend of the road. We can see them as they pass the corner by the château. At first the soldiers scarcely detach themselves from the firwoods. Then they seem to be marching on us in one solid block.
Few civilians get the chance to see an army, alien or otherwise, marching down to battle. The sight is piteous, thrilling. The imaginative must visualise ahead so many rotting corpses instead of those lithe, strong men. Personality seems lacking in that endless procession which comes streaming down the road with faces grey as their dust-laden clothes, mechanical in their movements as so many clock-work figures. Yet they look efficient, happy, fit.
A great ceremonial follows. The General of this vast army shakes hands with the colonel of each regiment, salutes the captains and lieutenants, and says some kindly word or two to each line of on-marching men. It is wonderful to see the spirit his cheery phrases put into their tired frames. They are no longer the envy of admiring women on Potsdam parade, these men with sweating faces and stiff limbs, but they are in good fettle none the less. One company has half a cigarette and the men pass it from hand to hand along the line so that each may have a whiff.
The soldiers are all jabbering away, odds and ends of Teuton witticisms, too colloquial for me to understand, interspersed with a fire of pleasantry at the expense of the peasants. They break out at intervals into snatches of song, winding up with the inevitable “Wacht am Rhein” and “Deutschland über alles.”
Although they do not march in step, “les Prussiens” advance in such close formation that each little company looks like one huge Falstaffian figure. The solidity of their Wellington boots is in good contrast to the colossal blunder of the pickelhauben, the spiky metal helmets covering their close-cropped heads.
The Kaiserliche regiment is here, dapper Hussars, regiment upon regiment of infantry, also the Brandenburgers, well-mounted, grim of feature, with their shoulder straps buttoned over to hide the Imperial crown and embroidered N. of their Colonel-Czar. Here are some of the Landwehr, too, homely, honest men who would far rather be working at their civilian tasks.
The troops greet the General as they pass him by with great bursts of “hoch” or “grüsz” rising in tempestuous outcries from myriads of dust-dried throats. They are irrepressibly gay and certain of themselves, but I think they are putting a good deal of faith in those devastating guns which went through in the silence of the night....