Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 459

In June, 1940, Sergeant Helion, with a company of reserve troops waiting to go into battle, was sketching the hills south of the Loire River, when the war suddenly rolled in upon him.

Its first apparition was a long, gloomy column of refugees riding in farm wagons, or pushing prams.

His company then carried out a confused retreating movement until it was surrounded by the Germans, a few days before France capitulated.

After a sort of death march during four days without food, Helion and his comrades were shipped by cattle-car to a labor camp at an estate farm in East Germany.

A year later they were removed to a Stalag in the harbor of Stettin.

At the time of his capture Helion had on his person a sketchbook he had bought at Woolworth's in New York.

When he was stripped, deloused and numbered by his guards, his much-thumbed sketchbook was seized and thrown on a pile of prisoners' goods to be confiscated.

`` It was then I knew that they were making war against Man, the individual within!!

-- who questioned things when given orders ''.