Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-07-13
Rainbow Division In Beautiful City of Arlon
Taught Belgians How To Be Merry Again
The Wine That Was Too Good for the and the Hospitality That the Ger
the Might Teach
Laugh AganYanks Found Germans Quiet and Possessed
Ignored the Huns Bows.

ed piled into the little money boxe!
of the French storekeepers, who
searched their poor stocks of good.
again and again to find things tina
the Americans wanted. The money
of their own country was returning
to them, and the marks and pfennigs
they had accumulated during thu
German occupation went into the
pockets of our doughboys.
They were poor enough stocks oil
goods. Heavn knows what with
the ravages of the boche in the last
hours before he left. But as though
they were business folk who had
just completed big deal, American
soldiers and Virton citizens sat
down to dinner together that night
in many a Virton kitchen or dining
room, and savory broiled steak and
hot French fried potatoes right
from the company's cook lay in
lordly state on hot platters before
them, and madame poured the cof-
fee and sat down in the midst of the
young Americans, not understand
ing a word of the jokes they roared
at or the stories they listened to so
eagerly But they were happy,
madame and monsieur and the
blushing mademoiselles, in contem-
plation of the serene-faced, clear
eyed boys from America and Of
their honest laughter and sincere
interest in madame and monsieur
and the blushing mademoiselles and
of their shameless appetites for
food.
From Brandeville through Mont
medy and Virton and beyond,
northern France and southern Bel
gium had been strangely well-pre-
served for having been war coun-
tries for four years. Even near
Montmedy, supply depot on the
Germans main army railroad line
between Longuyon and Sedan,
which had been within range of our
great naval guns during the last
weeks of the war, the earth was but
little torn with shell fire and the
villages scarcely at all. Over this
country the hastily formed armies of
France had fallen back during the
fall of 1914, offering little resistance
to the steady, thoroughly planned
advance of the German force, and
the villages and fields here lay just
as they were when the horses of the
Uhlans had pranced into them and
they were claimed for Germany.
Comes to Wars First Ruins.
Before noon, though, rolling on
ward through Belgium, the Rain
bow division came upon the wars
first ruins-the wreckage wrought
when black despair was first set
Ting over Europe, by guns so big
that the people blanched with terror
at the very mention of them.
They we're ordinary ruins, just like
those the Rainbow had left in
France. People walked among them
trundling wheelbarrows or pulling
little cars, and most of them were
women-old women. There were a
few children who stood and stared
at the slow column of horses, wag-
ons, motors, guns and men. They
did not wave their hands or clap
them. What these tiny Belgian
children knew about soldiers didn't
call for waving or clapping of hands.
Here and there an older girl. stand
ing by a tangled pile of rocks that
had been her home, waved one hand
steadily as though she had that day
set that hand aside for waving pur-
poses and no other. The older girls
understood the slow-moving column
of olive drab.
Shortly after noon they reached
the city of Arlon.
Arlon, browning broad hill, I'M
obscured from view for a mile along
the broad, shady road, lay shin
ing in the sun-like descriptions of
old Jerusalem-"with tow'rs of gold
and diadems of snow Old Rain
bow veterans, starved through long
months of fighting among wrecks
of towns for the sight of big city,
rounded the curve of the road and
saw it. "Wot tn -" they said,
and became speechless.
Beautiful Building Stripped.
All day the Rainbow rolled into
!Arlon. Division headquarters vases
tablished in the center of the city in
the great government building on
the place, where in some of the
rooms the silk-covered furniture,
tapestried walls and rich, thick
carpets were unhurt, and in others
were worn and slashed and heaped
up with dirty. WORKOUT German
gas masks and abandoned ammuni-
ton cases. 1t was beautiful, the in
terror of this great building-with
the beauty of an empty conch shell:
Hand-carved cases that had held
precious bronzes were open and
empty, the faces of richly carved
old grandfather clocks were empty,
the walls bare of pictures, the heavy
tables bare of covering.
IT. Ia no,%,r,a1