When our troops stop there is always plenty of hot food for them.

We never have to fight on an empty stomach--we Germans." These husky singers were the last Germans we were to see for many hours; for between the garrison force left behind in Brussels and the fast- moving columns hurrying to meet the English and the French and a few Belgians--on the morrow--a matter of many leagues now intervened.
Evidence of the passing through of the troops was plentiful enough though.

We saw it in the trampled hedges; in the empty beer bottles that dotted the roadside ditches--empty bottles, as we had come to know, meant Germans on ahead; in the subdued, furtive attitude of the country folk, and, most of all, in the chalked legend, in stubby German script-- "Gute Leute!"-- on nearly every wine-shop shutter or cottage door.
Soldiers quartered in such a house overnight had on leaving written this line--"Good people!"-- to indicate the peaceful character of the dwellers therein and to commend them to the kindness of those who might follow after.
The Lion of Waterloo, standing on its lofty green pyramid, was miles behind us before realization came that fighting had started that day to the southward of us.

We halted at a taverne to water the horses, and out came its Flemish proprietor, all gesticulations and exclamations, to tell us that since morning he had heard firing on ahead.
"Ah, sirs," he said, "it was inconceivable--that sound of the guns.

It went on for hours.