ON THE WAY TO THE RHINE
§ 1
At the back of the mind there always exists a sort of unconscious
conception of the various contingencies that may lie round the corner.
It is usually unformulated, but it is there none the less, and at the
moment when I was captured I had a very real if confused idea of what
was going to happen to me.
The idea was naturally confused because the etiquette of surrender is
not included in Field Service Regulations, and as it is not with that
intention that one originally sets out for France, the matter had not
bulked largely in the imagination. But the terrorist had supplied these
deficiencies, and he had made it hard to rid oneself of the supposition
that one had only to cross a few yards of unowned hollows to find
oneself in a world of new values and formulæ. As a dim recollection of
some previous existence I had carried the image of strange brutalities
and assaults, of callous, domineering Prussians, of Brigadiers with
Sadistic temperament. I was fully prepared to be relieved of my watch
and cigarette-case, and to be prodded in the back by my escort’s
bayonet.
Instead of that, however, he presented me with a cigar and pretended to
understand my French, which is on the whole the most insidious of all
forms of compliment.
There was also a complete absence of that machine-perfect discipline of
which we had heard so much. Several of the German officers had not
shaved, men stood to the salute with their heels wide apart, and the
arrival of a silver epaulette was not the sign for any Oriental
prostrations. Beyond the fact that the men wore grey uniforms and smoked
ungainly pipes, they strangely resembled an English battalion that was
carrying on a minor local engagement.
The authorities who interviewed us and confiscated our correspondence
displayed the characteristic magnanimity of the captor; after enlarging
on the individual merits of the Entente soldier, they proceeded to
explain why they themselves were winning the war.
“It’s staff work that counts,” they said. “We’ve got unity of command;
Hindenburg. You’ve got two generals, Haig and Foch.”
Indeed, everywhere behind the line there was intense gratification, but
not so much of the victory-lust that must have inflamed them in the
early months of the war, but of the weariness that four years had
brought, and of the thought that the close of so much misery was near.
Actual successes (so it appeared) were only the means to an end--it was
peace that mattered.
All this was very different from what I had expected. On the way
to Battalion Headquarters I had visioned an inquisitional
cross-examination. I had expected to be questioned by some fierce-jawed
general, who would demand the secrets of the General Staff, which I
should heroically refuse. Then he would call for the thumbscrew and the
rack, for the cat-o’-nine-tails and the red-hot iron. “Will you speak
now?” he would hiss. But I should remain as ever steadfastly loyal. The
entire scenic panorama of the _Private of the Buffs_ had swept before my
eye; only a spasm of optimism had changed the crisis. Just at the moment
when I was being led out to be shot, the general would suddenly relent.
His voice would shake, and a quiver would run down his massive frame.
“No, no!” he would say, with out-stretched hand. “Spare him! He’s only a
boy, and besides he’s a soldier and, damn it! that’s all that I am
myself.”
Actuality, however, refused to reflect the Lyceum stage. The man with
the records viewed my presence with complete equanimity.
“Oh, well,” he said, “it’s no good my asking you any questions. You’d
be sure to answer them wrong, and besides, I don’t think you could tell
me so very much. Let’s see, you’re in the ---- Division, aren’t you?
Well, you’ve got the following battalions with you.”
And he proceeded to give gratuitous information on the most intricate
points of organisation and establishment, all the hundred and one little
things that had been so laboriously tabulated before the Sandhurst
exams., and had afterwards been so speedily forgotten. He knew the
number of stretcher-bearers in a battalion, the number of G.S. wagons at
brigade, and the quantity of red tabs at division. Any one possessing a
quarter of his knowledge could have had a staff appointment for the
asking.
“Not bad,” he laughed.
It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, and since the barrage had
opened at three in the morning, none of us had sat down for a moment. We
began to entertain hopes of lunch.
“Where are we bound for?” I asked.
“Douai.”
“But we don’t march there to-day, do we?”
“If you can,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s about twenty kilos, and by
the time you’ve got to Vitry you probably won’t be sorry to have a
rest.”
The prospect of a twenty-kilometre march along the unspeakable French
roads was anything but encouraging. It was drizzling slightly, and there
seemed no likelihood of getting any food. In a sad silence we waited,
while the scattered groups of prisoners were collected into a party
sufficiently large to be moved off together.
Proceedings were at this point considerably delayed by a company
sergeant-major of the Blankshires who had spent his last moments of
liberty near the rum jar; and under its influence he could not rid
himself of the idea that he was still in charge of a parade. Nothing
would induce him to fall in in the ranks. He persisted in standing on a
bank, from which he directed operations in bucolic spasms, meanwhile
treating the Germans with the benevolent patronage that he had been wont
to display before the newly-joined subaltern. It was the one flash of
humour that that grey afternoon provided.
At last enough stragglers had dribbled in, six officers and about a
hundred and twenty men, and the march back began.
Nothing could exceed the depression of that evening. The rain began to
fall heavily, and through its dim sheets peered the mournful eyes of
ruined villages. We marched in silence; Vis-en-Artois, Dury, Torquennes,
one by one they were passed, the landmarks we had once picked out from
the Monchy heights. A stage of exhaustion had been reached when movement
became mechanical. For twelve hours we had had no food, and no rest for
at least sixteen, and to this physical weariness was added the
depression that the bleak French landscape never fails to evoke--the
grey stretches of rolling ground unrelieved by colour; the
dead-straight roads lined by tree-stumps, the broken homesteads; and to
all this was again added the cumulative helplessness that the events of
the day had roused; the knowledge of the ignominy of one’s position, and
the uncertainty of what was to come.
Gradually the succession of broken houses yielded to whole but deserted
villages; and these woke even more the sense of loneliness, of
nostalgia. Formerly, on the way back from the line, there was nothing so
cheering as to see through the night the first signs of civilisation.
Then they were to the imagination as kindly hands welcoming it back to
the joys from which it had been exiled. But now the shadowy arms of a
distant windmill only served to increase the feeling of banishment and
separation. Behind us we could hear the dull roll of guns, we could see
the flares of the Verey lights curving against the sky; and these seemed
nearer happiness than the untouched barns.
At last towards ten o’clock we reached Vitry and were herded into an
open cage. The whole surface of it was a liquid slime, round which men
were moving, trying to keep warm. Sleep there was impossible. But at any
rate there was something to eat, a cup of coffee, a quarter of a loaf of
bread. The German officer received us as a hotel-keeper receives guests
for whom he has no beds.
“I am very sorry, gentlemen,” he said; “but you’re only here for one
night. But I think I might be able to find you a little room in the hut
for the wounded.”
And so tired were we that there was pleasure in the mere prospect of a
roof; and on a floor covered with lousy straw we passed the night in
snatches of sleep, disturbed every moment by the tossing of cramped
limbs, and by the presence of muddy boots driven against one’s face, and
brawny Highlanders sprawling across one’s chest. But in that state of
exhaustion these troubles were remote--for a while at any rate we could
be still; and in the waking moments there lay no venom even in the
recurring thought that on the next morning we should have to begin our
march afresh.
§ 2
At Douai we spent four days of incorrigible prolixity in a small house
behind the bank. There was absolutely nothing to do. We had no books: we
could not write. There was no chess-board, and the only pack of cards
was two aces short. All we could do was to sleep spasmodically, and try
not to remember that we were hungry.
It was an impossible task. There was nothing else to think about. There
was no chance of forgetting how little we had had for breakfast. Slowly
we dragged from meal to meal.
For breakfast we got a cup of coffee made from chestnuts, and an eighth
of a loaf of bread. For lunch there was a bowl of vegetable soup. For
supper another cup of coffee, and another eighth of a loaf. Each
morning there was an infinitesimal issue of jam. That comprised our
entire ration.
We also had nothing to smoke.
There was nothing for it but to lie on our beds, with every road of
thought leading to the same gate. One remembered the most minute details
of dinners enjoyed on leave. A steaming array of visionary dishes passed
continually before the eyes. One thought of the tins of unwanted bully
stacked at the foot of dugouts. And for myself there was the bitter
recollection of three untouched parcels that I had received on the eve
of capture.
“To think of it,” I said, “a whole haggis, two cakes, four tins of
salmon!”
“Appalling!” echoed the others.
“And to think that the Jerrys have got it!”
“Don’t talk about it, man; let’s forget.”
But there was no escape.
“As a perfume doth remain
In the folds where it hath lain,”
so lingered the thoughts of those untouched delicacies.
The only interesting features of our day were the talks we had with one
of the German interpreters. It was the first time that any of us had a
chance of discovering their attitude towards the Entente, and it was
interesting to see how closely their propaganda had followed our own
lines.
To our accounts of atrocities in Belgium, the Germans had retorted with
stories about the Russian invasion of East Prussia. By them the
employment of native troops against white men was represented as an
offence against humanity as gross as the use of gas. Nothing, moreover,
would shake their belief that France and Russia were the aggressors. To
the interpreter it was a war of self-defence. There is no doubt that his
faith in this was absolutely sincere.
But what really touched him most closely was the propaganda of our
Press.
“Surely you cannot believe,” he said, “that we are an entire nation of
barbarians? Whatever our quarrels, you surely ought to allow that we
are human beings. If it had not been for your newspaper chiefs,” he
added, “the war would have been over in 1916.”
It was the one point on which he was really bitter.
One morning we were standing in the courtyard, and a German orderly was
chopping up wood for our fires. It was a bit cold, and to keep himself
warm one of the officers went over to help him.
The interpreter turned to the rest of us and said: “Now then, if your
_John Bull_ could get hold of a photograph of that, he’d print huge
headlines, ‘Ill-treatment of British Officers. Made to chop up wood for
German soldiers.’”
It was at Douai that we discovered for the first time the German habit
of putting dictaphones in prisoners’ rooms. Ours was attached to the
electric light appliances and masqueraded as a switch wire. But if any
one listened to our conversation, they can have heard very little to
interest them, save perhaps sundry strings of unsavoury epithets
preceding the word “Boche.”
From Douai we moved to Marchiennes; half of the way by tram. Every time
we stopped, French women crowded round us bringing cigarettes and
tobacco.
“It is not allowed,” said the German sergeant-major, “but I shall be
blind.”
Material comforts were even fewer at our new resting-place. There were
eight of us and we were put in a large, draughty barn, with bed-boards
covered with bracken that was unspeakably lousy. There were no rugs or
blankets of any description, and the nights were miserably cold. The
eight days we spent there were the worst of our whole captivity. The
food, consisting mainly of a stew of bad fish and sauerkraut, was at
times uneatable. Indeed, things would have gone very badly with us, had
we not managed to make friends with one of our guard. He was very small
and very grubby, and introduced himself to us one morning when the
commandant was not about.
“Me Alsacian,” he said. “English, French, kamarades. Prussians, ugh!
nix.”
From this basis of common sympathies negotiations proceeded as smoothly
as linguistic difficulties permitted. He told us that, if we wanted
food, the only way was to apply to the Maire. He himself would carry the
letter.
Two hours later he returned with a loaf of bread and a packet of lard.
It seemed a banquet, and for the rest of our stay he brought us, if not
a living, at any rate an existing ration, and on the day that we moved
he even came on to the station carrying a sack of provisions.
Our train journey provided an admirable example of official negligences.
For officialdom is the same all the world over. In England it was like a
game of “Old Maid”; and so it was here. To the commandant at Marchiennes
eight prisoners were only so many cards to be got rid of as quickly as
possible. As soon as they had been put in a train, and the requisite
number of buff sheets dispatched, his job was at an end. What happened
in the course of transmission mattered not at all.
And so the eight of us, with two German sentries, were put in a train at
Marchiennes at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. We had rations for one
day, and we reached Karlsruhe, our destination, at 7 p.m. on the
Thursday. In this respect our experience is that of every other prisoner
that I have met; only we, by being a small party, fared better than
most.
First of all, in regard to our sentries. As there were so few of us, we
soon managed to get on friendly terms with them. They were a delightful
couple. One of them was medically unfit, and had never been in the
trenches. He was mortally afraid of his own rifle, and at the first
opportunity unloaded it. The responsibility of a live round in the
breech was too great.
The other was old and kindly, with the Iron Cross; and like all men who
have seen war, loathed it thoroughly.
“Englander and German,” he said, “trenches, ah, blutig; capout; here
alles kameraden; krieg, nix mehr.”
And at every station he tried to get food out of the authorities. He was
not very successful. Only once, at Louvain, did he manage to raise some
bully beef and bread, and if we had had to rely on official largess, we
should have been very thin by the time we reached Karlsruhe. But
luckily, through being a small party, we were able to benefit from the
generosity of the Belgian civilians at a small village called
Bout-Merveille, who showered on us bread and eggs and cigarettes.
But for all that the journey was tedious beyond words. We were crowded
in a third-class carriage, with unpadded seats. We had nothing to read.
Wherever the train stopped at a siding it remained there for any period
from four to seven hours; it did all its movement by night, and for at
least ten hours of daylight presented us with a stationary landscape. It
seemed as though it would never end. Nor did our arrival in Germany
afford any diversion. Another traditional conception “went west.” We had
all vaguely expected to receive some insult or brutality at the hands of
the civilian population. But no old men spat on us, no hectic women
attacked us with their hair-pins. Instead of that they regarded us with
a friendly curiosity.
“Cheer up!” one girl said to us. “The war’ll soon be over. You will be
back in four months.”
It was the same here as behind the line. Peace--nothing else mattered.
The Germans had suffered so much personally that they had ceased to
nourish the collective loyalties of world power and empire. They no
longer wanted to conquer the world, they wanted to be at peace; and to
this end their victories in the field seemed the shortest way. The short
snatches of conversation that we had with civilians on Heidelberg
Station were all in this key. Peace would come in four months. Beyond
that they had no ambitions. They no longer shared the megalomania of
their rulers.