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130 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
But as I lift up a coat I discover yet another copy of the
"Treves Gazette," and next time I see a group of soldiers I
throw it out and observe how eagerly they devour the news
—
one of them reading aloud and the others listening.
Here stands a curious-looking train, belonging to some
fatigue party or railway corps. Some of the carriages have
been fitted up as repair workshops, with carpenter’s benches
and grindstones, and saws, chisels, axes and hammers are
lying about. Other carriages are crammed with bicycles,
wheelbarrows, spades, crow-bars, hatchets, pickaxes and
other tools—entrenching tools, such as used by the sappers.
As we issue from a long tunnel, a beautiful landscape
presents itself to our view—more hilly than before. Below
us several high roads meet, in a vale clad with verdant trees.
Towards the nearest road the embankment slopes down
steeply. Near by is a guard-hut, with a small detachment of
Landsturm men close by, resting from their labours and
waiting for their comrades to come out on the line to relieve
them. A number of grey-clothed workers with spades on
their backs come up to the railway line. " Any newspapers
left ? " asks one. " All gone," I reply. " That is very un-
fortunate," he answers, without looking up. Had I only
anticipated such avidity for news, I should have bought up the
whole edition of the Luxemburg German newspaper. At a small
halting-place we see some forty blue and grey soldiers near their
piled rifles. Is there no end of all these men in arms ? To
think of the numbers which the railways alone absorb !
The sun is setting ; it is nearly six. After we have passed
another tunnel, the panorama of the meandering water-course
of the Semois unfolds itself in the valley beneath us. More
groups of railway workers returning to their billets. " You
have twenty kilometres to the French frontier," one of them
informs me, and another points to a wrecked village on the
slope of a hill. We are told that whole piles of corpses lie
buried there.
The sun has now set, but there is still sufficient light to
enable us to see, from a high bridge across the Semois, the
main road, deep down below to the right of us, crossing the
river on a handsome stone bridge with three spans. The
banks are thickly covered with foliage, and we pass through
a dusky belt of trees.
The twilight deepens and the shades of night begin to fall.
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