But Von Bülow was now in the full tide of fighting strength--an
amazing spectacle to chance or enforced witnesses. Well may the
terrified peasants have stood hat in hand in the midst of their
ruined villages. Any door not left open was immediately broken
down and the interior searched. Here and there a soldier could be
seen carrying a souvenir from some wrecked château. But for the
most part everyone fled from before its path, leaving it silent
and abandoned. The field gray-green uniforms were almost invisible
in cover, in a half light, or when advancing through mist. No
conceivable detail seemed to have been overlooked. Each man carried
a complete equipment down to handy trifles, the whole weighed to
the fraction of an ounce, in carefully estimated proportions.

But this was not enough. Waiting for each column to pass were men
with buckets of drinking water, into which the soldiers dipped
their aluminum cups. Temporary field post offices were established
in advance, so that messages could be gathered in as the columns
passed. Here and there were men to offer biscuits and handfuls of
prunes. In methodical, machine-like progress came the ammunition
wagons, commissariat carts, field kitchens, teams of heavy horses
attached to pontoons, traction engines hauling enormous siege guns,
motor plows for excavating trenches, aeroplanes, carriages containing
surgeons, automobiles for the commanders, and motor busses in which
staff officers could be seen studying their maps. On some of these
vehicles were chalked Berlin-Paris. No branch of the service was
absent, no serviceable part if it overlooked--not even a complement
of grave diggers. It moved forward always at an even pace, as if on
parade, with prearranged signals passed down the line when there
was any obstacle, a descent or bend in the road.