Indeed some of them even wore a nondescript mixture of uniform and civilian garb.
They were Landwehr and Landsturm, troops of the third and fourth lines, going now to police the roads and garrison the captured towns, and hold the lines of communication open while the first line, who were picked troops, and the second line, who were reservists, pressed ahead into France.
They showed a childlike curiosity to see the prisoners in the box cars behind us.

They grinned triumphantly at the Frenchmen and the Britishers, but the sight of a Turco in his short jacket and his dirty white skirts invariably set them off in derisive cat-calling and whooping.

One beefy cavalryman in his forties, who looked the Bavarian peasant all over, boarded our car to see what might be seen.

He had been drinking.

He came nearer being drunk outright than any German soldier I had seen to date.