Picking our way back over the rails we made towards the dimly lighted station, its platform swarming with soldiers, gleaming with bayonets as they moved in a path of light. Entering a dingy waiting room, we stood beside a crowded lunch counter while the Baron went in to see the station Kommandant. Around the little stained topped table officers were eating dinner. I wondered first at the contrast of their uniforms stained and worn with the field, and the immaculate cleanliness of their persons, at their finger nails which each man must have manicured, for they shone, at their clean shaven faces, and glistening combed hair; one fancied their eyebrows were brushed too. These officers in the well worn uniforms stained by six months of field service had obviously made their toilettes as for the opera. We saw Captain von Stietencron coming out of the Kommandant's office. "There will be no troop train leaving for Lyck," he said, "until to-morrow. However, in forty minutes a big supply train is going and if you can stand riding in a freight car," and the Baron paused with the unspoken question. "Anything at all," I assured him. "When do we reach Lyck?" "With a supply train," he smiled, "one never knows." Whereupon, being a soldier, and having a chance to eat, the Baron proposed taking advantage of this chance. A steaming platter of an amazing good goulash, and we were picking our way over the rails to find the freight car in which we were to ride. We found it coupled to the engine and behind us, car after car, filled with ammunition, fodder and food, stretched endlessly up the track. We were in a freight car that had been painted inside and fitted with three long benches. From the white roof, two lanterns swung their flickering light across the brown walls, and at the farther end near a stiflingly hot round stove, I saw a big pile of straw where doubtless the train crew spent the night. So we sat under the swinging lanterns, while the light car rattled and shook as with a disorder. Time never passed more quickly, listening to the Captain's stories of the war. And later I knew of many things concerning that first great drive into France, of how Namur was taken by storm, but the Iron Cross that hung from Von Stietencron's coat did not appear in the narrative, although I referred to it many times. And with the shadows trembling on the wall and the two tired soldiers sleeping in the straw, it seemed the way to go to war, not as in the West, in a train on a soft plush seat. I involuntarily shuddered at the thought of the potential death we carried in the cars behind, the tons of ammunition coming now to make Russian dead. As the engine drew its heavy, dangerous load slowly on, through the partly opened door, I saw a drift of white falling snow beginning to blow past us in the night.