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TO BELGIUM 203
Forriéres ! Now the sun rises like a glittering golden ball, and
gives colour to trees, lields and pastures, houses, gardens, and
Landsturm men, now able once more to turn down their
coat-collars.
We arrive at Jemelle and step down. I thank my friends
for their excellent company, but a tip is not accepted. On the
platform comes a N.C.O. and asks what my business is. I
show him my Ausweis, and he asks me to wait in the station
commandant’s office until his arrival—it is now only 6.30 a.m.
Inside a friendly stove is burning, in front of which I settle
in an arm-chair and soon fall asleep.
After a while Captain Haaf, the commandant, comes
marching in and rouses me, mildly surprised at finding a total
stranger in possession of his own office. But we are soon friends.
" When is there a train to Namur ?
" I ask.
" At 11.30 we have a supply train going through, and if
you like to travel by that I shall be pleased to put on a pas-
senger coach."
" Good, that will suit me excellently." The Captain then
took me to a Belgian restaurant close by, where a couple of
breezy and talkative women soon served up a first-class
breakfast. The Captain told me that they did not yet feel
quite safe from the attentions of franctireurs. A few days
previously a rifle bullet had been aimed at the station-house
in Jemelle. The culprit was seized and court-martialled, but
his fate had not yet been settled. In the neighbourhood of
Houyet a band of Frenchmen had recently attacked some
Germans, and a punitive expedition of 130 men had been sent
out after them.
Time is now up and the train steams away through the hilly
country, its little villages and its cattle grazing in the pastures.
As yet there is nothing to remind one of war but the Landsturm
men on guard along the line, the railway troops at work here
and there, and the troop trains halting at the stations. At
Marloie one was standing in the station and we pulled up
alongside of it. One of the carriages was taken up by Red
Cross nurses, and as chance would have it, my window stopped
right opposite one of theirs, A couple of the nurses were
propped up against each other fast asleep, another couple
were reading, the rest were knitting. One of them looked out
through the open window. She looked very sweet in her light
dress and the Red Cross on the arm.
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