Brand and I, who were inseparable now, and young Harding, who had
joined us, crossed the Belgian frontier with our leading troop of
cavalry--the Dragoon Guards--and entered Germany on the morning of
September 4. For three days our advanced cavalry outposts had been
halted on the frontier line beyond Verviers and Spa. The scenery had
become German already--hill-country, with roads winding through fir
forests above deep ravines, where red undergrowth glowed like fire
through the rich green of fir-trees, and where, on the hillsides and in
the valleys, were wooden châlets and villas with pointed turrets like
those in the Black Forest.
We halted this side of a little stone bridge over the stream which
divides the two countries. A picket of Dragoons was holding the bridge
with double sentries, under orders to let no man pass until the signal
was given to advance.
“What’s the name of this place?” asked Brand of a young cavalry officer
smoking a cigarette and clapping his hands to keep warm.
“Rothwasser, sir,” said that child, removing the cigarette from his
lips. He pointed to a small house on rising ground beyond, a white
building with a slate roof, and said:
“That’s the first house in Germany. I don’t suppose they’ll invite us
to breakfast.”
Brand and I leaned over the stone bridge, watching and listening to the
swirl of tawny water over big grey stones.
“The Red Water,” said Brand. “Not a bad name when one thinks of the
rivers of blood that have flowed between our armies and this place.
It’s been a long journey to this little bridge.”
We stared across the brook, and were enormously stirred (I was, at
least) by the historic meaning of this scene. Over there, a few yards
away, was Germany, the fringe of what had been until some weeks ago the
mighty German Empire. Not a human being appeared on that side of the
stone bridge. There was no German sentry facing ours. The gate into
Germany was open and unguarded. A deep silence was over there by the
pinewoods where the undergrowth was red. I wondered what would happen
when we rode through that silence and that loneliness into the first
German town--Malmédy--and afterwards through many German towns and
villages on the way to the Rhine....
Looking back on that adventure, I remember our psychological
sensations, our surprise at the things which happened and failed to
happen, the change of mind which gradually dawned upon some of our
officers, the incredulity, resentment, suspicion, amazement, which
overcame many of them because of the attitude of the German people whom
they met for the first time face to face without arms in their hands. I
have already said that many of our officers had a secret dread of this
advance into German territory, not because they were afraid of danger
to their own skins but because they had a greater fear of being called
upon to do “dirty work” in the event of civilians sniping and any sign
of the _franc-tireur_. They had been warned by the High Command that
that might happen, and that there must be a ruthless punishment of any
such crimes.
“Our turn for atrocities!” whispered young cavalry officers,
remembering Louvain and Alost, and they hated the idea. We were in
the state of mind which led to some of the black business in Belgium
when the Germans first advanced--nervous, ready to believe any rumour
of treacherous attack, more afraid of civilian hostility than of armed
troops. A single shot fired by some drunken fool in a German village,
a single man of ours killed in a brawl, or murdered by a German out
for vengeance, might lead to most bloody tragedy. Rumour was already
whispering of ghastly things.
I remember on the first day of our advance meeting a young officer of
ours in charge of an armoured car which had broken down across the
frontier, outside a village.
“I’d give a million pounds to get out of this job,” he said gloomily.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He told me that the game was already beginning, and swore frightful
oaths.
“What game?”
“Murder,” he answered, sharply. “Don’t you get the news? Two of our
fellows have been killed in that village. Sniped from the windows.
Presently I shall be told to sweep the streets with machine-guns. Jolly
work, what?”
He was utterly wrong, though where he heard the lie which made him
miserable I never knew. I walked into the village, and found it
peaceful. No men of ours had been killed there. No men of ours had yet
entered it.
The boy who was to go forward with the leading cavalry patrol across
the Rothwasser that morning had “the needle” to the same degree.
He leaned sideways in his saddle and confided his fears to me with
laughter which did not conceal his apprehensions.
“Hope there’s no trouble!... Haven’t the ghost of an idea what to do
if the Hun turns nasty. I don’t know a word of their beastly language,
either! If I’m the boy who take the wrong turning, don’t be too hard
on me!”
It was a Sunday morning, with a cold white fog on the hill-tops,
and white frost on fir-trees and red bracken. Our cavalry and horse
artillery, with their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the
frontier before the bugle sounded for the forward march, were standing
by their horses, clapping hands, beating chests, stamping feet. The men
wore their steel hats as though for an advance in the usual conditions
of warfare, and the troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with
drawn swords. They rode at the trot through pine forests along the edge
of deep ravines in which innumerable “Christmas-trees” were powdered
with glistening frost. There was the beat of horses’ hoofs on frozen
roads, but the countryside was intensely silent. The farmhouses we
passed and cottages under the shelter of the woods seemed abandoned.
No flags hung out from them like those millions of flags which had
fluttered along all the miles of our way through Belgium. Now and
again, looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw a face there, staring
out, but it was quickly withdrawn. A dog came out and barked at us
savagely.
“First sign of hostility!” said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round
in his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned
under their steel hats, and then looked stern again, glancing sideways
into the glades of those silent fir-woods.
“It would be easy to snipe us from those woods,” said Harding. “Too
damned easy!”
“And quite senseless,” said Brand. “What good would it do them?”
Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it
out.
“The Hun never did have any sense. He’s not likely to get it now.
Nothing will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We
must be prepared for the worst, and if it comes----”
“What?” asked Brand.
Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard.
“We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain.”
“Wholesale murder, you mean?” said Brand, harshly.
“A free hand for machine-guns,” said Harding, “if they ask for it.”
Brand gave his usual groan.
“Oh, Lord!... Haven’t we finished with blood?”
We dipped down towards Malmédy. There was a hairpin turn in the road,
and we could see the town below us in the valley--a German town.
“Pretty good map-reading!” shouted the cavalry kid. He was pleased with
himself for having led his troop on the right road, but I guessed that
he would be glad to halt this side of the mystery that lay in that town
where Sunday bells were ringing.
A queer thing happened then. Up a steep bank was a party of girls.
German girls, of course, and the first civilians we had seen. A flutter
of white handkerchiefs came from them. They were waving to us.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Harding.
“Not yet,” answered Brand, ironically, but he was as much astonished as
all of us.
When we came into Malmédy, the cavalry patrol halted in the market
square and dismounted. It was about midday, and the German people were
coming out of church. Numbers of them surrounded us, staring at the
horses, whose sleek look seemed to amaze them, and at the men who lit
up cigarettes and loosened the straps of their steel hats. Some girls
patted the necks of the horses, and said;
“_Wünderschön!_”
A young man in the crowd, in black civilian clothes, with a bowler
hat, spoke in perfect English to the sergeant-major.
“Your horses are looking fine! Ours are skin and bones. When will the
infantry be here?”
“Haven’t an idea,” said the sergeant-major gruffly.
Another young man addressed himself to me in French, which he spoke as
though it were his native tongue.
“Is this the first time you have been in Germany, monsieur?”