Bottles covered the ground everywhere at Vincy-Manoeuvre. There were bottles in the streets, along the highways, in the fields. They marked the road by which the vanquished hordes had retreated. I counted almost two hundred in one trench, where a German battery had been placed. They lay pell-mell, mixed in with unexploded shells. Panic had apparently swept the gunners away. They had not had time to carry off their shells, so they had left them behind. But they had had time to empty the bottles. Absinthe, brandy, rum, champagne, beer, and wine had all been consumed, and the labels lay alongside of each other. Drunken, bloodthirsty brutes, thieving, sickening, nauseous beasts were what had descended upon France and passed through her country. Ruins, ashes and filth were the traces left behind by the German mob. Some hundreds of yards from the village I noticed a woman lost in the immense beet fields. Apparently she was unharmed. I walked in her direction, thrusting aside with my legs corpses of men and horses, scaling the trenches, making a circuit around the craters made by shells. Suddenly what was my surprise at seeing two German soldiers, accompanied by a farmer, coming along a footpath! They stopped at six paces, gave me a military salute, and pointed to the white brassard of the Red Cross they wore on their arms. "Where do you come from?" I asked. "What are you doing here?" "We come from that farm, where we have been for two days caring for two of our wounded. We didn't see any French soldier or officer. We don't know what to do. We want to go to the village down there," they pointed out a hamlet two or three kilometers off, "where we left a doctor and one hundred and fifty-three wounded." "Very good," I said, "follow me." Obediently the two orderlies marched behind me to the village they had pointed out. It was situated on the national highway to Soissons. In this place were a hundred and fifty or two hundred Germans, quartered in four or five houses under the guard of a company of Zouaves who had just arrived a half hour previously. The German major, informed of my arrival, stood in front of the main building. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, his face was the type the Alsatian Hansi loves to show in his books. He spoke very good French and even pretended that he did not want to answer the questions I asked him in his own language. "Show me your wounded," I ordered. He immediately conducted me everywhere, explaining the nature of each wound. Some were suffering and groaning; others, seeing the uniform of a French officer, tried to raise themselves up and salute. The German major asked: "When they come to evacuate the wounded to Meaux or some other place, do you suppose I shall be allowed to accompany them and continue my treatment?" "I don't know," I replied, "but there is one thing you can be sure of. My superiors will act in accordance with the demands of humanity. Now you follow me."