about noon
The best one can say of the German morale in the army is that it is spotted . In civilian life the nearer one gets to Germany the surer one is that the civilian morale seems to be sound . These things we found in the air up near the front line trenches , where German prisoners talk , and where one sees the war `` close up . '' But we were going still nearer to the German lines , and the next day we set out for Recicourt and arrived there about noon . It is a little bombed village where a few thousand soldiers are quartered , and a few score villagers huddle in cellars and caves by night and go forth to their farms by day . The village lies in a ravine . The railway runs in front of the town , and the week we were there a big naval gun was booming away on the railroad throwing death into the German lines eight or ten miles away .