Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

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Title: Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Author: Archibald Forbes
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9460] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.

NOTE
My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James Knowles of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Percy Bunting of the Contemporary Review, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
LONDON, June 1896.

CONTENTS
1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
9. RAILWAY LIZZ
10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbrücken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally, to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison-- drank their beer placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in the valley bounded by the Sch?necken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.
I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers frequented the _table d'h?te_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail, with its chevaux de frise of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zülow--he who one day brought in a prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
But although the Rheinischer Hof associates