Germany while stationed on the Rhine. Those who fancy the sight of an
American uniform beyond our lines was like shaking a red tablecloth in a
Spanish bull-ring may be surprised to know that these little jaunts were
by no means rare. We went not merely in full uniform, quite without
camouflage, but in army automobiles and wholly unarmed—and we came back
in a condition which a cockney would pronounce in the same way. The
first spin was to Düsseldorf, between two of her Sparticist flurries.
Not far above Bonn the landscape changed suddenly from American to
British khaki, with a boundary post in charge of a circumspect English
sergeant between. Below Cologne, with her swarming “Tommies” and her
plump and comely girl street-car conductors and “motormen” in their
green-banded Boche caps, we passed scores of the apple-cheeked boy
recruits England was sending us to take the place of those who were “fed
up with it,” and who gazed about them with that wide-eyed interest in
every little detail of this strange new land which the traveler would
fain keep to the end of his days. It seemed natural to find the British
here; one had grown to associate them with the flat, low portions of the
country. Far down the river a French post stopped us, but the sentry was
so interested in posing before my kodak that he forgot to mention
passes, and we were soon speeding on through a narrow horizon-blue belt.
The Belgians, who turned the scene to brown again not far beyond, were
even less exacting than the _poilus_. At the farther end of the great
bridge over the Rhine between Neuss and Düsseldorf they had a score of
sentries posted behind barbed-wire entanglements, touching the very edge
of the unoccupied city. But our only formality in passing them was to
shout over our shoulders, “_Armée américaine!_” that open sesame of
western Europe for nearly two years.
Somewhat to our disappointment the atmosphere of Düsseldorf was very
little different from that of an occupied city. The ubiquitous small boy
surrounded us more densely wherever our car halted; the thronged streets
stared at us somewhat more searchingly, but there was little other
change in attitude to be noted. Those we asked for directions gave us
the same elaborate courtesy and annoying assistance; the shops we
entered served us as alertly and at as reasonable prices; the
manufacturer we called on listened to our wants as respectfully as any
of his fellows in the occupied zone—and was quite as willing to open a
credit with the American army. The motto everywhere seemed to be
“Business as usual.” There was next to nothing to suggest a state of war
or siege anywhere within a thousand miles of us—nothing, at least,
except a few gaunt youths of the ’19 class who guarded railway viaducts
and government buildings, still wearing their full trench equipment,
including—strange to believe!—their camouflaged iron hats! Postal clerks
of the S. O. S. supposed, of course, that all this brand of head-gear
had long since crossed the Atlantic. Humanity certainly is quick to
recuperate. Here, on the edge of the greatest war in history, with the
victorious enemy at the very end of the next street, with red revolution
hovering in the air, life went on its even way; merchants sold their
wares; street-cars carried their lolling passengers; children homeward
bound from school with their books in the hairy cowhide knapsacks we had
so often seen doing other service at the front chattered and laughed and
played their wayside games.
The return to Coblenz was even more informal than the down-stream trip.
Belgian, French, and British guards waved to us to pass as we
approached; only our own frontier guard halted us, and from then on our
right arms grew weary with returning the salutes that were snapped at us
in constant, unfailing succession.
The second trip was a trifle more exciting, partly because we had no
permission to carry it as far as we did—playing hooky, which in the army
is pronounced “A. W. O. L.” keeps its zest all through life—partly
because we never knew at what moment the war-battered “Dodge” would fall
to bits beneath us, like the old one-horse shay, and leave us to
struggle back to our billets as best we could. It was a cold but
pleasant Sunday. Up the Rhine to Mainz nothing broke the rhythm of our
still robust motor except the M. P. at the old stone arch that separated
the American from the broad horizon-blue strip—the two journeys laid end
to end made one realize what an enormous chunk of Germany the armistice
gave the Allies. We halted, of course, at the cathedral of the French
headquarters to see the “Grablegung Christi (1492),” as every one
should, listened awhile to the whine of the pessimistic old sexton with
his, “Oh, such another war will come again in twenty years or so;
humanity is like that,” and sped on along a splendid highway to
Wiesbaden. The French were making the most of their stay in this garden
spot. They let no non-fraternizing orders interfere with enjoying the
best the Kurhaus restaurant or cellars, the magnificent, over-ornate
opera-house, the beautiful park, even the culture of the better class of
German visitors, afforded.
Our pass read Wiesbaden and return, but that would have made a tame day
of it. Rejuvenated of heart, if saddened of pocketbook, by the Kurhaus
luncheon, we rattled swiftly on to the eastward. In due time we began to
pass French outposts, indifferent to our passage at first, then growing
more and more inquisitive, until there came one which would not be put
off with a flip of the hand and a shouted “_Armée américaine_,” but
brought us to an abrupt stop with a long, slim bayonet that came
perilously near disrupting the even purr of our still sturdy motor. The
crucial moment had come. If the French guard could read our pass we were
due to turn back forthwith, chagrined and crestfallen. But none of us
had ever heard of a French guard who _could_ read an American pass, and
we presented it with that lofty assurance which only those have not
learned who wantonly wasted their time with the A. E. F. in France. The
sentry received the pass dubiously, as we expected him to; he looked it
over on both sides with an inwardly puzzled but an outwardly wise air,
as we knew he would; he called his corporal, as we had foreseen; the
corporal looked at the pass with the pretended wisdom of all his kind,
handed it back with a courteous “_Bien, messieurs_,” as we were certain
he would, and we sped on “into Germany.”
It was a bland and sunny afternoon. The suburban villages of Frankfurt
were waddling about in their Sunday best, the city itself was
promenading its less dowdy holiday attire along the wide, well-swept
streets. We brought up at a square overlooked by a superbly proportioned
bronze gentleman who had lost every stitch of his attire except his “tin
hat,” where we left the car and mingled with the throng. Passers-by
directed us courteously enough to the “Goethehaus.” Its door-bell handle
dangled loosely, as it had fifteen years before, but a sign informed us
that the place was closed on Sunday afternoons. The scattered crowd that
had paused to gaze at our strange uniforms told us to come next day, or
any other time than Sunday afternoon, and we should be admitted at once.
We did not take the trouble to explain how difficult it would be for us
to come another day. Instead, we strolled nonchalantly through the
thickening throng and fell in with the stream of promenaders along the
wide main street. There were four of us—Colonel—but never mind the name,
for this one happened to be a perfectly good colonel, and he may still
be in the army—and three other officers. We—or, more exactly, our
uniforms—attracted a decided attention. The majority stared at us
vacantly or with puzzled airs; now and then we saw some man of military
age whisper our identity to his companion. No one gave any indication of
a desire to molest us. Yet somehow the atmosphere about us was
considerably more tense than in Düsseldorf. Twice we heard a
“_verdammte_” behind us, but as one of them was followed by the word
“_Engländer_” it may have been nothing worse than a case of mistaken
identity. Still there was something in the air that whispered we had
best not prolong our call beyond the dictates of good taste.
The shop-windows were fully as well stocked as those of Cologne or
Coblenz; the strollers, on the whole, well dressed. Their faces, in the
expert opinion of the colonel, showed no more signs of malnutrition than
the average crowd of any large city. Here and there we passed a sturdy,
stern-faced sailor, a heavy Browning or Luger at his side, reminding us
that these men of the sea—or of the Kiel Canal—had taken over the police
duties in many centers. Otherwise nothing met the eye or ear that one
would not have seen in Frankfurt in days of peace.
As we were retracing our steps, one of my companions stepped across the
street to ask directions to a fashionable afternoon-tea house. He
returned a moment later beside a gigantic, heavily armed
soldier-policeman. The fellow had demanded to see our passes, our
permission to visit Frankfurt. Now, in the words of the American
soldier, we had no more permission to visit Frankfurt “than a rabbit.”
But this was the last place in the world to betray that fact. The pass
to Wiesbaden and return I had left in the car. I showed great eagerness
to take the policeman to see it. He gave evidence of a willingness to
accept the invitation. We were on the point of starting when a more
dapper young soldier-guard, a sergeant, appeared. The giant clicked his
heels sharply and fell into the background. The sergeant spoke perfect
English, with a strong British accent. He regretted the annoyance of
troubling us, but—had we a pass? I showed renewed eagerness to conduct
him to the car and show it.
“Not at all. Not at all,” he apologized. “As long as you have a pass
it’s quite all right, you know, quite. Ah, and you have an automobile?
Yes, yes, quite, the square where the bronze Hermes is. It’s quite all
right, I assure you. You will pardon us for troubling you? The Astoria?
Ah, it is rather a jaunt, you know. But here is the Café Bauer, right in
front of you. You’ll find their cakes quite as good, and their music is
topping, you know. Not at all. Not at all. It’s quite all right, really.
So sorry to have troubled you, you know. Good day, sir.”
It was with difficulty that we found seats in the crowded café, large as
it was. A throng of men and women, somewhat less buoyant than similar
gatherings in Paris, was sipping beer and wine at the marble-topped
tables. A large orchestra played rather well in a corner. Seidels of
good beer cost us less than they would have in New York two years
before. The bourgeois gathering looked at us rather fixedly, a bit
languidly. I started to light a cigar, but could not find my matches. A
well-dressed man of middle age at the next table leaned over and lighted
it for me. Two youthful students in their gay-colored caps grinned at us
rather flippantly. A waiter hovered about us, bowing low and smirking a
bit fatuously whenever we spoke to him. There was no outward evidence to
show that we were among enemies. Still there was no wisdom in playing
too long with fire, once the initial pleasure of the game had worn off.
It would have been hard to explain to our own people how we came to be
in Frankfurt, even if nothing worse came of another demand for our
passes. Uncle Sam would never suffer for the loss of that “Dodge,” but
he would be quite apt to show extensive inquisitiveness to know who lost
it. The late afternoon promenade at the Kurhaus back in Wiesbaden was
said to be very interesting. We paid our reckoning, tipped our tip, and
wandered casually back to the square graced by the bronze young man
whose equipment had gone astray. To say that we were surprised to find
the car waiting where we had left it, the doughboy-chauffeur dozing in
his seat, would be putting it too strongly. But we were relieved.
The Kurhaus promenade was not what it was “cracked up to be,” at least
not that afternoon. But we may have been somewhat late. The opera,
beginning at six, was excellent, lacking something of the lightness of
the same performance in Paris, but outdoing it in some details, chiefly
in its mechanical effects. One looked in vain for any suggestion of
under-nourishment in the throng of buxom, “corn-fed” women and stodgy
men who crowded the house and the top-heavily decorated foyer during the
_entr’actes_. Frenchmen in uniform, from generals to _poilus_, gave
color to the rather somber audience and made no bones of “fraternizing”
with the civilians—particularly if she chanced to be beautiful, which
was seldom the case. American officers were numerous; there were
Englishmen, “Anzacs,” Belgians, Italians, and a Serb or two. The
after-theater dinner at the Kurhaus was sumptuous, except in one detail;
neither bribery nor pleading could win us the tiniest slice of the black
war-bread that was stintingly served to those with bread-tickets.
Otherwise “wine, women, and song” were as much in evidence as if war had
never come to trouble the worldly pleasures of Wiesbaden.
We left after ten, of a black night. Our return trip, by direct route,
took us through a strip of neutral territory. We were startled some
eight or ten times by a stentorian “_Halte!_” at improvised wooden
barriers, in lonely places, by soldiers in French uniforms who were not
Frenchmen, and who could neither speak any tongue we could muster nor
read our pass. They were French colonials, many of them blacker than the
night in which they kept their shivering vigil. Most of them delayed us
a matter of several minutes; all of them carried aside their clumsy
barriers and let us pass at last with bad grace. Nearing Coblenz, we
were halted twice by our own soldiers, stationed in pairs beside their
blazing fires, and at three in the morning we scattered to our billets.
Two cartoons always come to mind when I look back on those months with
the American Watch on the Rhine. One is French. It shows two _poilus_
sitting on the bank of the famous stream, the one languidly fishing,
with that placid indifference of the French fisherman as to whether or
not he ever catches anything; the other stretched at three-fourths
length against a wall and yawning with ennui as he remarks, “And they
call this the Army of _Occupation_!” The other drawing is American. It
shows Pershing in 1950. He is bald, with a snowy beard reaching to his
still soldierly waist, while on his lap he holds a grandson to whom he
has been telling stories of his great years. Suddenly, as the erstwhile
commander of the A. E. F. is about to doze off into his afternoon nap,
the grandson points a finger at the map, demanding, “And what is that
red spot in the center of Europe, grandpa?” With one brief glance the
old general springs to his feet, crying, “Great Cæsar! I forgot to
relieve the Army of Occupation!”
Those two squibs are more than mere jokes; they sum up the point of view
of the soldiers on the Rhine. The French, and like them the British and
Belgians, only too glad that the struggle that had worn into their very
souls was ended at last, had settled down to all the comfort and leisure
consistent with doing their full duty as guardians of the strip
intrusted to them. The Americans, like a team arriving at a baseball
tournament so late that they could play only the last three innings, had
gone out on the field to bat up flies and play a practice game to take
some of the sting out of the disappointment of finding the contest over
before they could make better use of their long and arduous training. It
was this species of military oakum-picking that was the second grievance
of the American soldier on the Rhine; the first was the uncertainty that
surrounded his return to the land of his birth. While the neighboring
armies were walking the necessary posts and sleeping many and long naps,
our soldiers had scarcely found time to wash the feet that had carried
them from the trenches to the Rhine, much less cure them of their
blisters, when orders swept over the Army of Occupation calling for long
hours of intensive training six days a week. It is said that an English
general on an inspection tour of our area watched this mile after mile
of frenzied trench-digging, of fake bombing-parties, of sham battles the
barrages of which still made the earth tremble for a hundred miles
around, of never-ending “Squads east and squads west,” without a word,
until he came to the end of the day and of his review. Then he remarked:
“Astounding! Extraordinary, all this, upon my word! You chaps certainly
have the vim of youth. But ... ah ... er ... if you don’t mind telling
me, just what are you planning to do? Fight your way back through
France?”
V
GETTING NEUTRALIZED
There is an aged saying to the effect that the longest way round is
often the shortest way home. It applies to many of the crossroads of
life. Toward the end of March I found myself facing such a fork in my
own particular footpath. My “duties” with the Army of Occupation had
slowed down to a point where I could only write the word between
quotation-marks and speak it with a throaty laugh. I suggested that I be
sent on a walking trip through unoccupied Germany, whence our
information was not so meager as contradictory. It would have been so
simple to have dropped into the inconspicuous garb of a civilian right
there in Coblenz, and to have slipped noiselessly over the outer arc of
our bridgehead. Eventually, I believe, the army would have adopted the
suggestion. There were times when it showed an almost human interest in
the project. But I am of an intensely selfish, self-centered
disposition; I wanted to try the adventure myself, personally. Besides,
there was no certainty that my grandson would care for that species of
sport. He might be of quite the opposite temperament—a solid,
respectable, church-going, respected citizen, and all that sort of
thing, you know. Furthermore, I had not yet taken the first preliminary,
indispensable step toward acquiring a grandson. Wherefore, in a lucid
moment, I recalled the moth-eaten adage above plagiarized, and concluded
that the easiest way to get “over into Germany” was to turn my back on
the Rhine and return to France.
It may be that my offer to relieve Uncle Sam from the burden of my
support caught the authorities napping. At any rate, the application
sailed serenely over the reef on which I fully expected to see it
hopelessly shipwrecked, and a week later I was speeding toward that
village in central France known to the A. E. F. as the “canning
factory.”
Relieved for the first time in twenty-three months of the necessity of
awaiting authority for my goings and comings, I returned a fortnight
later to Coblenz. It would not have been difficult to sneak directly
over our line into unoccupied territory. I knew more than one
forest-hidden loophole in it. But that would scarcely have been fair to
my erstwhile colonel—and with all his faults the colonel had been rather
decent. Besides, while that would have been the more romantic thing, it
might not have led to as long and unhampered a stay in Germany as a more
orderly and gentlemanly entrance.
Of the two neutralizing points, that to the north was reputed the more
promising. The express to Cologne sped across white fields that belied
the calendar and gave the heavily blossomed cherry- and apple-trees the
appearance of being laden with clinging snow. The more brassy British
khaki took the place of our own, the compartment groups changed
gradually from American to English officers. The latter were very young,
for the most part, and one scarcely needed to listen to their almost
childish prattle of their work and things warlike to know that they were
not veterans. Long freight-trains crowded with still younger Britishers,
exuding the extreme callowness of the untraveled insular youth, rattled
into town with us from a more northern direction, happy to take the
place of the grim and grizzled warriors that were being demobilized. In
the outskirts of the city Germans of both sexes and all ages were
placidly yet diligently toiling in their little garden patches into the
twilight of the long spring day.
The British, rating me a correspondent, billeted me in a once proud
hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral. In the scurry of pursuing
passport and visées in Paris I had found no time to change my garb to
the kind that flaps about the ankles. In consequence my evening stroll
was several times broken by as many of England’s boyish new guardsmen,
their bayonets overtopping them by several inches in some cases, who
pounded their rifle-butts on the pavement in salute and stage-whispered
a bit tremulously:
“Officers is not to walk about too much by theirselves, sir.”
My query at the first warning had been answered with a:
“Three of them was badly cut up last night, sir.”
There were no outward signs of any such serious enmity, however; on the
contrary, the populace seemed almost friendly, and at the officers’ club
guests were checking their side-arms with the German doorman.
The tall and hearty Irish guardsman in charge of British Rhine traffic
readily granted my request to go down the river in one of the daily
steamers carrying troops back to “Blighty” for demobilization. That
day’s boat floundered under the simple little name of _Ernst Ludwig
Gross Herzog von Hessen und bei Rhein_! I believe the new owners called
it _Louie_. A score of German girls came down to the wharf to wave the
departing “Tommies” farewell. All day we passed long strings of barges
flying the triangular flag of the Food Commission, bearing supplies for
the Army of Occupation and the civilian population of the occupied
region. The time was but a few weeks off when the arteries of the Third
Army flowing through France would be entirely cut off. The food on board
the _Louie_ was not unlike our own army ration; the bunks supplied the
officers were of a sort that would have moved our own more exacting
wearers of the “Sam Browne” to start a Congressional investigation. The
most noticeable differences between this Blighty-bound multitude and our
own doughboys were three in number—their lack of inventiveness in
amusing themselves, their lower attitude toward women, and the utter
lack of care of the teeth, conspicuous even among the officers. We
should have been hard put to it, however, to find a higher type than the
youthful captains and lieutenants in charge of the steamer.
At five we halted for the night beside several huge barges anchored well
out in the stream, their holds filled with very passable bunks—as
soldiering goes. While the Tommies, pack-laden, clambered down the
half-dozen narrow hatches to their light quarters, I dropped in on the
families that dwelt in the stern of each. Those who have never paid a
similar call might be surprised to find what homelike comfort reigns in
these floating residences. Outwardly the barges are of the plainest and
roughest, coal-carriers for the most part, with all the smudge and
discomfort of such occupation. As the lower house door at the rear
opens, his eyes are prepared to behold something about as inviting as
the forecastle of a windjammer. Instead they are all but dazzled by the
immaculate, housewifely cleanliness, the orderly comfort of the
interior. The Rhine-plying dwelling is a close replica of a “lower
middle-class” residence ashore—a half-dozen rooms, carpeted,
lace-curtained, the walls decorated with family portraits,
elaborate-framed mottoes and over-colored statuettes of the Catholic
faith, a great square bed of inviting furnishings in the parental room,
smaller though no less attractive ones in the other sleeping-chambers,
easy-chairs, the latest thing in kitchen ranges, large lamps that are
veritable chandeliers suspended from the ceiling—nothing was missing,
down to the family cat and canary.
It was noticeable that though the barges had been commandeered by their
army and they never lost sight of the fact that their owners were “the
enemy,” the English officers were meticulously courteous in requesting
permission to enter the family cabins. Your Britisher never forgets that
a man’s home is his castle. One could not but wonder just what the
attitude of a German officer would have been under reversed conditions,
for the same motto is far less deeply ingrained in the Teuton character.
The barge nearest the steamer was occupied by a family with five
children, the oldest aged fourteen, all born on board, at as many points
of the vessel’s constant going and coming between Rotterdam and
Mannheim. Two of them were at school in the town in which the family was
registered as residents, where the parental marriage was on record,
where the father reported when the order of mobilization called him to
arms. The oldest had already been entered as “crew,” and was preparing
to follow in his father’s footsteps—if the expression be allowed under
the circumstances.
When they had arranged themselves for the night, the “Tommies” returned
on board the steamer for a two-hour entertainment of such caliber as
could be aroused from their own midst. There were several professional
barn-storming vaudeville performers among them, rather out of practice
from their long trench vigils, but willing enough to offer such talents
as they still possessed. Nor were the amateurs selfish in preserving
their incognito. It was simple fare, typified by such uproarious jokes
as:
“’Ungry, are you? Well, ’ene, ’ere’s a piece of chalk. Go draw yourself
a plate of ’am an’ eggs.”
But it all served to pass the endless last hours that separated the
war-weary veterans from the final ardently awaited return to “the old
woman an’ the kids.”