He shuffled on until the gnawing of hunger became well-nigh unendurable, turned a corner, and ran into a long line of emaciated fellow-citizens before a municipal soup-kitchen. Falling in at the end of it, he worked his way forward, paid an _Ersatz_ coin for a bowl of _Ersatz_ stew, returned to his lodging—and died in twenty minutes. IV KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA If I have spoken chiefly of Coblenz in attempting to picture the American army in Germany, it is merely because things centered there. My assignment carried me everywhere within our occupied area, and several times through those of our allies. The most vivid imagination could not have pictured any such Germany as this when I tramped her roads fifteen, twelve, and ten years before. The native population, dense as it is, was everywhere inundated by American khaki. The roads were rivers of Yankee soldiers, of trucks and automobiles, from the princely limousines of field-officers and generals to the plebeian Ford or side-car of mere lieutenants, often with their challenging insignia—an ax through a Boche helmet, and the like—still painted on their sides. The towns and villages had turned from field gray to olive drab. Remember we had nine divisions in our area, and an American division in column covers nearly forty miles. American guards with fixed bayonets patrolled the highways in pairs, like the _carabinieri_ of Italy and the _guardias civiles_ of Spain—though they were often the only armed men one met all day long, unless one counts the platoons, companies, or battalions still diligently drilling under the leafless apple-trees. We made our own speed rules, and though civilians may have ground their teeth with rage as we tore by in a cloud of dust or a shower of mud, outwardly they chiefly ignored our presence—except the girls, the poor, and the children, who more often waved friendly greetings. Of children there were many everywhere, mobs of them compared with France—chubby, red-cheeked little boys, often in cut-down uniforms, nearly always wearing the red-banded, German fatigue bonnet, far less artistic, even in color, than the _bonnet de police_ of French boys, and accentuating the round, close-cropped skulls that have won the nation the sobriquet of “square-head.” The plump, hearty, straw-blond little girls were almost as numerous as their brothers; every town surged with them; if one of our favorite army correspondents had not already copyrighted the expression, I should say that the villages resembled nothing so much as human hives out of which children poured like disturbed bees. Every little way along the road a small boy thrust out a spiked helmet or a “_Gott mit uns_” belt-buckle for sale as we raced past. The children not only were on very friendly terms with our soldiers—all children are—but they got on well even where the horizon blue of the _poilu_ took the place of our khaki.