"Now, good luck once more to you and health from all the boys of the public school of Prussian Battau, especially from the captain.
The following reply was received by Heinz in due time:
"DEAR HEINZ: His Excellency Major General von Hindenburg wishes me to thank you very much for your letter and the pictures. His Excellency will have a picture sent to you, and hopes that you will always be industrious boys, despite the war.
A visit to the French trenches in Flanders, under the auspices of the French General Staff, is here described:
Standing in the shelter of a wonderfully ingenious and deep-dug trench on what undoubtedly is the bloodiest battlefield in European history, the most notable impression is one of utter surprise at the absence of movement and the lack of noise.
Within one's range of vision, with a strong field glass, there are probably concealed not fewer than 100,000 men, yet except for the few French soldiers with rifles in their hands standing or kneeling in the immediate vicinity and keenly peering over the flat land toward the positions held by the Germans, no human presence was noticeable.
A staff officer said that behind a slight slope 300 yards away many German guns were hidden, but only an occasional burst of flame and a sharp whirring sound coming from an indefinite point told of this artillery.
A little forest to the left bristles with machine guns backed by infantry in rifle pits and covered trenches. The approach to these positions has been made almost impossible by barbed-wire entanglements strewn with brush and branches of trees and having the appearance of a copse of heather.
British, French, and Belgian troops are greeted with cheers by the people as they march from spells of duty in the trenches to the villages in the rear. These men are jaded and worn. They stay in the trenches for days at a time and are constantly under artillery fire as well as being subjected to infantry attacks.
As one group goes back to rest, another moves forward to take its place, and the men going into action cheer those who are retiring.
A British officer writes home from the front remarking on the curious avoidance by the Germans, at first, of shelling the town hall at Ypres.