We received our clothes with many jokes, which may, or may not, be usual in other armies. “Now then, be careful there with my grave-clothes. What am I to be buried in, if you go spoiling them already?” Witticisms of this sort were frequent. The German soldier is not the least squeamish about speaking of death. His songs are full of it. And the little books of devotion issued by his Government are written with great skill in order to make him feel that death is something pleasant and light, the entrance to a life of toilless ease. I never read these books without feeling an inclination to die then and there. We marched off to the station in traditional German style, flowers in our rifles, flowers in our helmets, flowers in every nook and cranny of our uniform that would take a flower. The officers used to protest against this, saying that it made us look like prize oxen at the fair. Considering what the fate of prize oxen is, the simile was not altogether inapt. In any case, the fashion suited the peasant taste. Before we left, a short religious service was held on the parade-ground. The chaplain, who had already been awarded the Iron Cross, had gained my respect a few weeks before by a sermon he had preached to order on the special temptations of a soldier’s life. It was the only sermon of the kind that I have heard, which neither offended his hearers’ feelings nor in any other way violated the rules of good taste. But he was yet to show what he could do. At the end of the service he said, with indescribable unction, “Now let us all join in saying the Lord’s Prayer, and after that in singing, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!’” There was a great parade of secrecy about our destination. We were not supposed to know where we were going, and from the time we were selected for service we were not allowed to telegraph. As a matter of fact, the officials responsible revealed all that they ought to have kept secret, and we knew exactly for what part of the huge Russian front we were bound and all the details of our journey. And through us the whole of Cassel knew too.