Bottles covered the ground everywhere at Vincy-Manoeuvre. There were
bottles in the streets, along the highways, in the fields. They
marked the road by which the vanquished hordes had retreated. I
counted almost two hundred in one trench, where a German battery had
been placed. They lay pell-mell, mixed in with unexploded shells.
Panic had apparently swept the gunners away. They had not had time to
carry off their shells, so they had left them behind. But they had had
time to empty the bottles. Absinthe, brandy, rum, champagne, beer, and
wine had all been consumed, and the labels lay alongside of each
other. Drunken, bloodthirsty brutes, thieving, sickening, nauseous
beasts were what had descended upon France and passed through her
country. Ruins, ashes and filth were the traces left behind by the
German mob.
Some hundreds of yards from the village I noticed a woman lost in the
immense beet fields. Apparently she was unharmed. I walked in her
direction, thrusting aside with my legs corpses of men and horses,
scaling the trenches, making a circuit around the craters made by
shells. Suddenly what was my surprise at seeing two German soldiers,
accompanied by a farmer, coming along a footpath! They stopped at six
paces, gave me a military salute, and pointed to the white brassard of
the Red Cross they wore on their arms.
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