There was
even one of King Albert standing with drawn sword, saying: "You shall not
violate the sacred soil of my country." A publication that also interested
me was a weekly paper brought out in Hamburg and written in English. It
was filled with jokes, beneath which were German notes explaining any
difficult or idiomatic words and phrases. With all their hatred of England
the Huns still continued to learn English.
Thanksgiving Day came along, and we set to work to provide some sort of a
special feast for the men. It was most difficult to do so, for the
exchange had not as yet been regulated and the lowest rate at which we
could get marks was at a franc, and usually it was a franc and a quarter.
Some one opportunely arrived from Paris with a few hundred marks that he
had bought at sixty centimes. For the officers we got a suckling pig,
which Mess Sergeant Braun roasted in the priest's oven. He even put the
traditional baked apple in its mouth, a necessary adjunct, the purpose of
which I have never discovered, and such stuffing as he made has never been
equalled. We washed it down with excellent Moselle wine, for we were but a
couple of miles from the vineyards along the river. In the afternoon I
borrowed a bicycle from the burgomaster and trailed over to Elmen, where I
found my brother just about to sit down to his Thanksgiving dinner served
up by two faithful Chinamen, who had come to his regiment in a draft from
the West Coast.
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