a side wall exit door that opened out on what appeared to be a
promenade. It was glassed in, like a sun parlor and looked out on what
had been a cheap beer-garden. Along one wall we saw a row of muddy brown
and black boots. On the floor were piles of uniforms, German, Russian
and Austrian, and knapsacks, drilled and nicked with bullets. Kicking
over a filthy bundle of field gray, I saw that it was slashed.
"We had to cut most of the uniforms off the wounded," explained the
doctor. "Most of them we have thrown out--we had to. If you could only
have seen what those men looked like when they were brought in! We get
them from the field hospital. This is the first hospital behind the
lines, and when they are well enough to be moved, they are sent on to
better quarters, further into Germany, but the way those fellows looked.
Think of it, some of them had not had their uniforms off for three
months. When we took off one man's boot, we found a blood clot two
inches thick on the sole of his foot. It had run down from a wound on
his leg. Why, some of those men were five days on the battlefield before
they were found. One or two were out of their minds. You cannot conceive
the horror of it! Later, I'm going to get one of those fellows to tell
you his story."
The time had swiftly passed and as we came back into the theater, we saw
two gray-cloaked German officers, and at their heels the orderly. They
seemed very much excited, and I was sure now that they were going to ask
the doctor if he was positive that I was not an English spy. It was
something more exciting, though. They conversed in German, and I caught
the words, "_Eisener Kreuz_."
"What a piece of luck!" the doctor exclaimed; "one of my patients has
been awarded the Iron Cross, and Captain Hoffman of the Gleiwitz
garrison has come to make the presentation."
We walked then to the bedside of a mild-looking man, who, you learned,
was _Landwehr_, private Grabbe of the second Stralsund. A bulkiness to
his leg under the covers showed where he had been wounded, and when he
saw the gray-coated officers, a question leaped in his quiet eyes. You
wondered if he knew and how many days he had lain there doubting and
dreaming if ever they would come. The Captain strode towards him, held
out his hand, and said, "I congratulate you." You followed the soldier's
eyes as they watched the Captain's hands reach into his coat pocket and
draw from it the band of black and white ribbon from which dangled the
coveted cross. Without a word the Captain fastened it to the second
button of the man's hospital jacket and stepping back, saluted him. You
saw the soldier pick up the cross in both hands, stare at it a moment,
while his eyes filled a little, and then his mild face turning
wonderfully happy, he awkwardly expressed his thanks. As the last
stammered word was spoken there burst from all the wounded a huzza. The
nurses applauded and, overwrought, the soldier tried to sit upright in
bed and bow his thanks. He had half succeeded when we saw him wince, and
Dr. Sanders made him lie down. The congratulations over, we left him
calling for pencil and paper, for at once he must write home about it.
And you wondered how much you would have given could that one minute of
this soldier's life be included in your own.
"Wait till I tell you what the fellow did," said the doctor, after the
officers had bowed themselves away, "It is one of the duties of the
_Landwehr_, you know, to guard the railroads. Late in October, when the
Germans were retreating from their lines outside Warsaw, they had to
hold the railroads to the last. This man's commander was ordered to hold
back the Russians from a little railroad depot. Private Grabbe was given
ten men and a machine gun and posted by a little house near the station.
He had to keep back an overwhelming number of Russians until an entire
battalion was on the train, and then with the little detail make a run
for it, Well, as the Russians came in great force, his comrades
retreated and left him there alone.
"As I told you, men get crazy in battle. Grabbe did not know that he was
alone. He stuck by that machine gun, wounded and alone, mowing down the
Russians until the whole German battalion--twelve hundred men--had
withdrawn. Still he stuck to that machine gun, slaughtering them so,
that by George! the Russians retreated. Grabbe's commander came up
presently and asked him where the other men were. Grabbe said he didn't
know and then the Commander saw that he was wounded."
Outside a violin began to play, and Dr. Sanders explained that often the
local talent dropped in to entertain the wounded. The music continued
and we went from bed to bed hearing the different stories; then the
music stopped, and in a clear, though childishly quavering voice, a girl
began a recitation in the lobby outside. Before he came to Gleiwitz, Dr.
Sanders didn't know two German words. Now, as he told me, he knows
three. Consequently, as the girl spoke on and the faces of all the
wounded suddenly became grim, the doctor wondered why. Then here and
there a man began repeating the girl's words, others, too weak to speak,
following her words with moving lips. Higher and higher quavered her
voice; and suddenly I recognized what she was saying. Before I could
tell the doctor, though, she swept into a climax, to fierce "_Jawohls_"
from the lips of the wounded.
"I don't know what you're saying," shouted Dr. Sanders, rushing into the
lobby, "but stop it. It excites these patients."
He saw that I was grinning, and asked what the joke was. "It's on me,
what was that girl speaking?"
"A new poem," I told him. "The name is: 'Murderous England.'"
"So that's it, eh?" And he went up to the girl, whose hair was braided
down her back and whose cheap, bright pattern dress came barely below
her knees.
"Now, little girl," he said, "when you want to come round to the
hospital to entertain the prisoners, you learn how to speak 'Mary Had a
Little Lamb' or something. Get Sister Anna to teach it to you!" And
patting the child on the head, Dr. Sanders gave her a ten-pfennig piece,
and asked her who had taught her the poem.
"_Meine Mutter_," replied the child.
We then sat in the lobby for two hours, buying beer for the
convalescents and listening to their stories. One man told us how, with
two hundred soldiers, he had hid in a Russian barn, and that a shrapnel
shell flying through the window had exploded, killing and wounding
nearly every one in his company. Another told how he had been on outpost
duty with seven other men, and that the Russians had begun machine gun
fire at night. All his comrades were either killed or wounded, and he
said that although he was only wounded in the arm, he did not dare to
get up because the Russians maintained a steady fire for four hours,
and that all he could do was to hug the ground with the bullets whizzing
over him, knowing that he was growing weaker and weaker every moment.
Another had a most interesting experience. While in a shallow trench, he
had been hit in the arm and in the leg. The hospital corps got him. The
stretcher bearers were taking him back, when suddenly it got too hot for
them, and they had to drop him and run for cover. The firing ceased,
and, seeing he was alone, the soldier crawled over to a dead German and
picked up his rifle. He was half sitting with this in his lap, when he
saw some Russians coming. He raised the gun and they ran, and then he
discovered they were hospital men. He was cursing his luck, when one of
his comrades, a little fellow, who had come back to find him, discovered
him. They traveled back to the German lines at intervals of ten minutes,
the little fellow having to put him down to rest every so often. Then
the doctor began to tell me something about the wounds he had seen as
the result of this war.
"What I marvel at is," said Dr. Sanders, "that a man can go into the
battleline and come out alive. The amount of lead and steel that is sent
flying through the air is appalling. Of course we will not have any
statistics on it until after the war is over, but everything I can learn
from the wounded, and from the nature of their wounds--and I have men
here hit five times--they must be using far, far more ammunition,
proportionately of course, than in any war in the world's history. By
the way, judging from my patients, the Russians cannot be using
dum-dums. I have yet to find one in a man. For every three rifle ball
wounds, we get two caused by shrapnel and about one quarter by fragments
of bursting shells. We had a man who was hit by a piece of shell--and
those fragments are terribly hot. It cut his throat to his ear, but it
just stopped at the sheath of the artery. His life was saved by the
minute distance. The Germans have the greatest confidence in us here. We
have one man here who might have been sent on to another hospital five
weeks ago. We didn't send him, though. It was almost a form of paranoia
and honestly I dreaded sending that man away. I feared the nervous
shock. Doctors who come from the front tell me that they have actually
seen cases of men being killed, who only had a bullet wound in their
hand. It was the nervous shock that killed them.
"You see those two Russians," and the doctor pointed towards two
heavy-faced patients. "Well, they were in mortal terror that we were
making them well so as to have more fun by killing them later. It took
two weeks to convince them that they would not be put to death. They are
pets here now."
The doctor was called away a moment, and as I watched him stride off,
his sturdy figure carrying well the olive-drab of the United States
army, I noticed again that the heads of the wounded turned, following
him with thankful eyes, and it was not difficult longer to understand
how these few Americans were able to come into the midst of strange
Silesia, and transform that theater, where at night if they forget to
shut the door, they can hear the ribald clamor from the cheap cabaret
next door; it was not difficult to understand how they, all of them
having their first experience with war, had developed an efficiency
which the Germans had complimented by sending them the worst cases from
the firing line. That sturdy, wide-shouldered man in army olive-drab
personified something that made you thrill at the thought that you were
an American.
But Dr. Sanders was not the last impression that I had of Gleiwitz,
although he waved good-by to me at the train.
As I look back at Gleiwitz now, I can see the flat-floored theater with
the gray nurses lighting lamps. The early twilight is coming through the
windows. It is all quiet. In two hours the wounded will have supper, and
here and there you can hear the deep breathing of sleep. In the
lingering light the steel curtain has turned a vague gray and of the
three flags, only our own is sharply defined. I see Sister Anna walking
softly between the rows of gingham-spread cots, her kind, almost saintly
face hallowed by the lamp in her hands. She is beckoning. She raises the
lamp so that its pale reflection falls upon a bed. And there I see the
boy from the Schleswig-Holstein village, who, with his chum, burned a
Russian village, and whose ambition is to kill a hundred men; and the
boy's face is buried in the pillow, his arm circling round it, like a
baby asleep.
XV
THE SECRET BOOKS OF ENGLAND'S GENERAL STAFF
Of course Germany was prepared. Russia and France were prepared, not so
sufficiently, of course, as Germany; yet with their reorganized armies
both were judged powerful on land. England though was unprepared.
Everybody knew that. The newspapers said so. Statesmen said so,
Parliament admitted it. To be sure the British Navy for years was
prepared. Winston Churchill announced that. But the empire was not ready
for its army was not ready. It was a small army, a quarter of a million
men, twice as large as the United States army. It was useful in the
colonies. Everybody knew Tommy Atkins. Kipling did that. But for
fighting on the continent of Europe was like venturing into a strange
land for these soldiers of England's colonial domain. They were not
ready. Any Englishman will tell you that. But the most amazing part of
it all is that the British army was wonderfully prepared.
This will be merely a document of military wonders; diplomatic
considerations will have no part in it. I promise you to abstain from
the use of that tiresome word--neutrality.
[Illustration: _Photographs obtained by Mr. Fox from the originals in
the German War Office._
Pages and cover of the English staff books captured at the battle of
Mons.]
The English army was ready to go to war. It was ready to go to war in
Belgium. Its officers knew everything there was to be known about
Belgium. They knew every square mile of Belgium's terrain. They knew
what districts were best suited to strategical purposes. They knew what
roads best to use for their artillery, what roads best could stand the
heavy guns, what roads best could not. They knew every body of water in
Belgium. They knew what water was fit to drink and what was not. They
knew the current of every stream and the number of boats on it. They
knew the number of houses in every Belgian village and the number of
soldiers that could be billeted in those houses. They knew the location
of every church steeple in Belgium, and whether or not to recommend it
as an observation post. They knew what roads their troops could march on
without being seen by the aviators of the enemy--what roads were hidden
from the sky by the interlacing branches of the big trees. They even
knew the best places for their own aviators to land. Every conceivable
thing that a modern army should know about a future battleground the
British army knew.... How do I know this?
At the battle of Mons in northern France where something happened--the
English say it was the French supports; the French blame it on the
English--those wonderful soldiers of Great Britain, the professional
soldiers, were cut to pieces. The Germans made many prisoners. In the
kits of the captured British officers they found some interesting
documents. They were books of a size that would fit in a coat pocket.
They were about a quarter of an inch to an inch thick. They were printed
on white paper and the covers were a light brown. They were
finger-marked and muddy. They contained the most amazing collection of
military information that any nation ever possessed for its army. Some
books were marked _Confidential_; others bore the designation property
of His Britannic Majesty's Government; all were prepared by the General
Staff, of the English War Office.
All the books were dated 1914, brought right up to the minute. At the
Great General Staff in Berlin I saw these books. I sat in Major von
Herwarth's room one night and copied their contents until I was
overwhelmed with their wonderful detail. I had wanted to take the books
to my hotel. It was impossible. They were regarded by the Germans as
being so valuable that they could not be taken from this officer's room.
I induced the Staff to let me make photographs of the books, of their
covers, pages and maps. And when I was finished the officer said to me,
"We were very glad to get these books. We were very thankful. Because
they are so much better than any information that our General Staff had
about Belgium. In fact they are so good, these English books, that we at
once had whole pages copied for the use of our officers in Belgium."
The Germans admitting English superiority on a military point! Germany,
whom everybody thought was the best prepared nation in Europe, beaten at
its own game. So valuable are these books regarded by the General Staff
that they are locked in a safe.
As I digested the contents of these English books, I decided that if I
had military power behind me, and these books in my pocket, that I could
walk, ride, even fly in Belgium--without ever having been there before.
I could always know precisely where I was at, where I could best be
housed. I saw that each book begins with "roads," and reports the
widths, surfacing and nature of the ground on either side of these
roads. Every conceivable bit of information about the railroads in
Belgium is between the covers, even down to the station masters at small
places and the language each one speaks. Rivers, canals, bridges, dikes,
have all been tested by the unprepared Englishmen. I thought now English
cavalrymen were interested in learning that, "in the village of Eppeghen
there are three forges." On another page I learned that "a kindly
feeling exists for England because of a school for English children." In
Tamines, "a large number of Germans are employed in the electrical
work." On page 17 of Volume Two, I read "the farms ... are large solidly
built structures, the barns usually being lofty with high eaves. The two
storied dwelling houses enclose a barnyard. The Howitzer is the weapon
of attack against them and the folds in the ground facilitates its use."
Under "Monetary Contributions"; I read, "It may be necessary under
certain conditions in an enemy's country to replace supply requisitions
in kind by contributions in money."
And the English blame the Germans for their levies in captured cities.
In the upper right hand corner of Volume Three, I saw what seemed to be
a serial number--349. The other volumes also bore this number. Volume
III declares itself to be a report on road, river and billeting
conditions in Belgium; it gives information for the country between the
river Meuse and the German frontier, going as far south as certain
designated military lines. Glancing over this book, I saw on page 20
that the district near the German frontier was particularly suitable for
billeting soldiers, that three or four men could be housed with every
inhabitant except in Seraing and Liége where only two soldiers could be
put up. On page 232 I learned that the billeting report had been
reconnoitered every year from 1907 to 1913. This means that in the
district covered by this book every dwelling place with a roof over it
had been checked up every year for seven years. Thus were proper living
accommodations for English soldiers in Belgium verified by the skilled
War Office of London.
In Volume IV which gave all military routes for Belgium north and east
of the line Brussels, Nivels, Namur, Liége, Vise, I read on page 13 that
the reference maps dealing with the section "Brussels-Louvain" were
those of the Belgian General Staff of a scale 1/40,000 but that sheets
31 and 31 of the English War Office were also available. Those English
sheets were based on a reconnoiter of the entire district made in 1913
by the English. But more significant is it that English officers were
referred to the 1/40,000 scale maps of the Belgian staff, which England
obviously must at that time have had--as an asset of preparedness.
[Illustration: _Photographs obtained by Mr. Fox from the originals in
the German War Office._
Cover and page of book taken from the pocket of British aviator brought
down by Germans.]
In the German General Staff I had a number of these English maps
photographed. They were drawn by the British War Office and photo-etched
by the Ordnance Survey office at Southampton 1912. As you may see from
the accompanying illustration their detail is marvelous. Even orchards,
ruins and wind mills are designated.
A Staff Officer in possession of one of these books would not have to
reconnoiter Belgium. Referring to Volume IV, which devotes a good deal
of space to the movement of troops, he would learn that delays in
marching might be caused by "a steep ascent for half a mile out of
Brussels on the road to Louvain." He would be comforted to know, though,
that "there is a good field of fire and fine view from the roadway
except between Cortenberg and Louvain where the view is reduced to one
half mile. Troops could operate easily anywhere except in the hilly
wooded country about Cortenberg to the south." If he wanted an
observation post he would learn that at Cortenberg there was a good
church steeple. A footnote reassures him that the roadway has been lined
with trees which would afford in summer cover from aerial scouts.
These books throw an interesting light upon the question of shelled
churches. The Allies have accused the Germans and the Germans have
accused the Allies of using church steeples for observation posts. Both
armies have used them, both have shelled them. I make this statement
because I saw the cathedral of Malines gaping with a hole that could
only have come from a German gun--so did the lines run--and because at
Houtem, I climbed the steeple of the church of the Annunciation of Mary
the Virgin to a German post, and I make this statement because on page
176 of Volume III of these English books on Belgium, I read under
"observation points" the names of no less than five churches for a
single small district. I photographed this page; you may read the church
for yourself.
Page 70 of Volume III assures an English officer that "a few infantry
with sandbags could from the parapet of the barrage near the Belgium
line hold the approach to Jalhay up to the valley." On page 91,
reconnoitered in 1913, he learns that "the best way to attack Terwagne
appears to be from the southwest where there is a good deal of dead
ground and artillery co-operation could be obtained from Liveliet." On
page 122 he learns that "an advance up the Liffe-Thynes valley supported
by guns on the Sorraine ridge appears to be the best way of dealing with
(two tactical situations which are called) A and B."
Perhaps some of the most interesting bits of military information are
contained in the 1914 issue of secret Field Notes which is numbered A
1775. Using this book an English cavalry commander upon turning to page
32 and looking at (a) reads:
"Classes of persons in Belgium who might be useful as guides."
He sees that _Gardes champetres_ are credited with knowing the rural
districts well. They should be able to give the English army information
about conditions of water, forage, horses, live stock and vehicles. The
_gardes forestiers_ know in detail the woods in their own districts.
"Rural postmen, many who own bicycles and cycle repairers, especially
the official repairers to the touring club of Belgium would be
invaluable as guides." The English officers are advised to get hold of
the drivers of tradesmen carts as they supply most of the villages from
the towns, and would therefore know local roads well.
But to me the climax was reached when I read in this book of English
field notes a description of the code in use by the Belgium army for
writing orders. I shall quote in part exactly what was written. "The
names of units are generally replaced by their initials; the numbers of
regiments are written in large arabic figures; those of battalions,
squadrons or artillery groups in Roman figures; those of company troops
(pelotons) of cavalry and batteries in small arabic figures."
They give an example. (EM 2/III)/10. They explain that this means in
code, regimental headquarters and the second company of the third
battalion of the Tenth Belgian Infantry of the line. Thus in code EM =
Infantry headquarters; 2 = 2nd company; III = 3rd battalion; 10 = 10th
infantry.
They give (2 C.M.S.S)/(5 D.A.). They explain that this means the second
mechanical motor artillery ammunition column of the Fifth Division.
Thus, in code, 2 C.M.S.S. = headquarters 2nd mechanical ammunition
column; 5 D.A. = 5th Division, artillery.
And these are code orders of the Belgium army and the English General
Staff knew about them before war was declared! And England was
unprepared! These books tell me that England was beating the Germans at
their own game.
Opening one book I saw a table that ran across two entire pages. This
table was filled in the most intimate details regarding a single
village.
In one of the road and river reports I read these words, "Data given by
the Belgium government railroad cabinet on January 1st, 1912." Thus was
the English officer assured of its accuracy. These are the figures that
were given for the use of British troops in Belgium.
Locomotives 4,233
Coaches 8,001
Baggage cars 2,714
Goods wagons 86,562
Special wagons,
(for oil, etc.) 2,418
[Illustration: _Photographs obtained by Mr. Fox from the originals in
the German War Office._
Aviator's key map prepared by English war office.]