When I went along to the room where the papers had to be signed, he made me sit in his arm-chair and examined my head. I cannot explain the difference between his manner and that of the others. Kindness, in the others so evidently sham, official, and by order, with him was second nature.
"You will get well, quite well in time," he said, "but it will be very long."
"Let me take your arm, you must not fall on the slippery floor. You might hurt yourself badly and not be able to leave us to-night."
Even if I had not understood the German words, there was no misunderstanding the sympathy in the tone of his voice.
The word of deliverance came that evening while we were at dinner. We were told that two motor-cars and an ambulance waited at the door, and in a very few minutes we started off for the station. As the night was dark and wet, there was some delay before the cars could find the platform our train was due to start from. We drove into the station by a goods entrance, and the cars halted quite near the train. In addition to ourselves, a large party of wounded soldiers, about 120 of them, were bound for the frontier.
As I made my way slowly along the platform I saw several of these poor fellows standing about on crutches, one or two of whom I had met before at Cambrai. They were very cheery, and it was cheering to see them and hear the familiar query, "Are we downhearted?" with its answering roar from the train-load of cripples. But the thin pale faces and ragged clothes bore witness to the misery from which they, the lucky ones, were now to be released.
After waiting for nearly two hours, a German officer of high rank came along to make a final inspection. He asked us if we had any complaints to make, and again repeated the hypocritical phrase, "We want you to go back to England contented." And at last the train moved off. Osnabrück is only forty miles from the frontier. The suspense and worry of the day had told on all of us, and when the much-longed-for moment arrived, and the train actually crossed the frontier, we had all fallen asleep.
Würzburg and all that nightmare in German hands were already slipping far away into the past. The reaction found expression not in hilarious excitement or placid contentment, but in an exceeding weariness of mind and body. Quite early in the morning the train stopped at a small station well over the German frontier. Two ladies came along the corridor with baskets full of cakes, oranges, tobacco, and other gifts. "Oh, you poor men," said a voice in English, "is there anything we can do for you?" It was the first Englishwoman's voice we had heard for a long time (it did seem such a very long time since we left Southampton Water).