A soldier named Franz sends a lyrical, almost literary postcard from occupied Metz — the magnificent Imperial German railway station (La Gare de Metz), built 1905–1908 in Rhenish Romanesque style on Kaiser Wilhelm II's personal order, fills the frame with its massive stone façade, arched entrance, and soaring clock tower, photographed by the Metz-based artist-photographer known as Lubo. On the reverse, written in a fluid, educated hand, Franz describes in evocative German prose a military parade through Metz's streets — infantry marching, cavalry following, then field artillery — while the local population watches in stunned silence: "fast alle sind schon waschechte Franzosen geworden, die Kinder kennen die deutsche Sprache nicht mehr" ("almost all have become true Frenchmen, the children no longer know the German language"). The card bears a "Visa Metz n° 742" military censor stamp and is addressed from Franz, serving in an Artillery Regiment in France. A remarkably human and historically rich document of the 1940 German re-occupation of Lorraine.