Though we crept along as circumspectly as a motorist who knows that he is being trailed by a motor-cycle policeman, peering behind farmhouses and hedges and into the depths of thickets and expecting any moment to hear a gruff command, emphasized by the bang of a carbine, it was not until we were at the very outskirts of Aerschot that we encountered the Germans.  There were a hundred of them, so cleverly ambushed behind a hedge that we would never have suspected their presence had we not caught the glint of sunlight on their rifle-barrels.  We should not have gotten much nearer, in any event, for they had a wire neatly strung across the road at just the right height to take us under the chins.  When we were within a hundred yards of the hedge an officer in a trailing grey cloak stepped into the middle of the road and held up his hand.

“Halt!”

I jammed on the brakes so suddenly that we nearly went through the windshield.

“Get out of the automobile and stand well away from it,” the officer commanded in German.  We got out very promptly.

“One of you advance alone, with his hands up.”

I advanced alone, but not with my hands up.  It is such an undignified position.  I had that shivery feeling chasing up and down my spine which came from knowing that I was covered by a hundred rifles, and that if I made a move which seemed suspicious to the men behind those rifles, they would instantly transform me into a sieve.

“Are you English?” the officer demanded, none too pleasantly.

“No, American,” said I.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said he, his manner instantly thawing.  “I know America well,” he continued, “Atlantic City and Asbury Park and Niagara Falls and Coney Island.  I have seen all of your famous places.”

Imagine, if you please, standing in the middle of a Belgian highway, surrounded by German soldiers who looked as though they would rather shoot you than not, discussing the relative merits of the hotels at Atlantic City and which had the best dining-car service, the Pennsylvania or the New York Central!

I learned from the officer, who proved to be an exceedingly agreeable fellow, that had we advanced ten feet further after the command to halt was given, we should probably have been planted in graves dug in a nearby potato field, as only an hour before our arrival a Belgian mitrailleuse car had torn down the road with its machine-gun squirting a stream of lead, and had smashed straight through the German line, killing three men and wounding a dozen others.  They were burying them when we appeared.  When our big grey machine hove in sight they not unnaturally took us for another armoured car and prepared to give us a warm reception.  It was a lucky thing for us that our brakes worked quickly.