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132 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
dukedom of Godfrey the Crusader, and are now at Messempré-
Messincourt, the first station on the French side. One of my
fellow-travellers has met an acquaintance from Darmstadt,
and gives him messages for his home just as the train moves
out into the darkness. A sheaf of fiame issues from the funnel
of the engine, tinging the steam red. Probably the fire and
the powder on board are used to each other by now, after
having kept company for a whole week. Over the flat French
meadows floats a film like the whitest hoar-frost, but it is
only a very thin stratum of mist, lit up by the moon. . . .
About midnight I fell asleep for the rest of the journey,
and at 3 o’clock on Sunday morning, the 27th of September,
I was awakened by one of my fellow-passengers who told
me that we were in Sedan. We had been travelling for eighteen
hours. The Commandant of the station. Major von Plato, is
already up at this early hour, cheerful and sprightly ; he
receives me with a hearty welcome and places a room in the
station building at my disposal. But before I take possession
of my new quarters I must have a cup of tea with the Major
and a few other officers, as wide-awake and lively as he. Our
early breakfast is served in a strange-looking dining-room
belonging to the commissariat station established here, where
sixteen lady volunteers provide for up to four thousand
wounded daily. In their kitchen huge caldrons are always
boiling, filled with nourishing soup. Immediately after the
occupation of Sedan, a wooden shed was erected in two days
in the station yard, where troops and wounded passing through
are now fed at long tables. This morning, too, several seats
were occupied, whilst outside a detachment of Landwehr
were waiting for their morning coffee and roll. Each man
was also to receive dry rations for the day—bread and ham
—
to take with him on his journey to the front. All were merry
and cheerful, no one would guess that these men would shortly
stand in the fighting line, to conquer or to die. It was said
that, on an average, five thousand men a day had been passing
through Sedan, on their way south, during the last five weeks.
Meat and vegetables for the maintenance of these troops are
supplied by the Sedan " Line of Communication Depot
Commandant’s District,"—a French district the boundaries
of which have been defined within the sphere of the Chief
Command of one of the German Armies. The provisions are
supplied, on requisition, by the French local civil authorities,
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