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CHAPTER XIX
AN EXCURSION TO THE FRONT AT LILLE
THERE came a knock at my door. "Entrez / " I cried as
neutrally as possible, and in stepped Duke Adolf
Friedrich of Mecklenburg, young and gay and manly.
He held out both hands to me and bade me heartily welcome
to Bapaume. He hoped that I would be pleased with the few
days I was to spend there. " But this room is too small !
"
—
" Oh no, it is quite big enough."
—" Right. We will take all
meals together, for I am now free for several days and shall be
able to take you round and show you the sights."
Thereupon we sat and chatted until it was time to get ready
for supper in the officers’ mess. When we entered, they were
all assembled. The large table was presided over by Infantry-
General von Plettenberg, Chief of the Garde-Corps, Adjutant-
General to H.M. the Emperor and an old friend of our own
Chief of Staff General Bildt. He was a tall man, thin and fair,
a real soldier and a brave and plucky man who was never more
at home than when the bullets were whizzing round him.
Like Field-marshals von Haeseler and von der Goltz, he had
the incurable habit of always turning up at odd moments
where danger loomed largest. He had a way of walking out
to the foremost trenches in the middle of the night and drawing
the French rifle fire at a range of two hundred metres, and this
merely to see how the soldiers were getting on and to make
sure that everything was in the best order, A magnificent
trait, in my opinion, for a plucky leader braces the soldiers’
courage. We Swedes have always demanded this quality
from our leaders. General von Plettenberg was a man of
quick and impulsive temperament, but he was serious never-
theless, partly perhaps because he had recently lost a son in
the war. At table he would sit wrapped in thought for a
long while, then suddenly his eyes would fill with humour and
he would break into a jest, as when he said that it was bad for
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