The German soldiers, who were guarding me, seemed to be decent sort of
men, and treated me fairly well, as soldiers who have been fighting
each other usually act. All through my army experience I have found
that those in safe non-combatant positions are the most fierce and
relentless towards those who are disarmed and helpless. My captors
allowed me to use my first aid bandages, with which I bound up my hurts
as best I could.
The sprain was so painful that I could not walk, and they had almost to
carry me to the rear. My arm also stung.
I noticed on every side the destruction wrought by war. I could not
have believed such ruin possible, had I not seen it. Abandoned guns,
broken gun-carriages and air craft, ammunition piled up to be abandoned
or destroyed, supplies and munitions amid wrecks of ruined buildings,
and trampled yellow grain. Several of these grain fields had been
fired by the invaders and extinguished by the merciful rain. Among the
life-sustaining grain were dead men, dead horses and in two instances
I saw badly wounded Prussian soldiers that had been abandoned in the
necessity for haste, or because they were of no further use. There
were, also, the lesser wreckage of fragments of clothing, knapsacks,
broken rifles and innumerable small fragments of war’s ruin and ravage.
I was in considerable pain and constantly cried out when hurried; for
I intended to emphasize my injuries for purposes of my own. My captors
were, apparently, disgusted with me. They talked and gestured until I
began to fear that they were debating whether or not to lessen their
trouble by knocking me on the head. Finally they picked up a discarded
rifle, halted, and fitted a piece of wood in the muzzle, and handing it
to me, made motions that I was to use it for a crutch.
That night, while shut in the room of a partially ruined dwelling, I
was helped to wash, and put cold water bandages on my hurts and slept
fairly well. In the morning the pain from my sprain was mostly gone.
I washed my wounded arm and wet and rewound my bandages. I could have
walked had I chose; but I determined to keep that hurt for strategic
use; for I had firmly resolved not to go to a German prison. Their
reputation as providers was so bad that, to use expressive slang, “I
couldn’t see it.”
All the food I was given up to that time was some coarse wheat bread
and not a scrap of meat; and some hot water bewitched into imitation of
coffee. But the guards themselves did not have any better fare so far
as I could see.
One of my two guards was a clean-faced, good-looking German boy who
seemed of a higher class than his heavy-faced comrade. He took my
crutch from me and made motions that I was to stand. I tried to look
meek and obedient, and cried out and buckled up with pretended pain.
Seeing this, he restored my rifle crutch, and put one hand under my arm
to help me as I limped painfully along.
While I was on the outlook for a chance to use my crutch for a club and
my legs for escape, my hopes were dashed by the guard taking me to a
large house, around which sentinels were stationed.
After a parley with a sentinel who was pacing the broad doorway, I was
conducted into a large room where were several officers, orderlies and
clerks, some of them writing at a big table, on which were spread maps,
papers, and big books that looked like ledgers.
No notice was taken of me at first. The clerks continued writing, the
officers talking, until there bustled into the room a tall, blond
officer with several decorations flashing on his breast, and an air
of decision and command that can not be expressed in words. The other
officers clicked their heels and saluted, the clerks did the same. The
officer made a careless but graceful acknowledgment by return salute,
spoke a few sharp guttural words that set several of the officers and
attendants hustling and addressed a few words to a man, who but for his
uniform looked like a clerk. Then turning to me, he motioned for me to
stand, and in good English interrogated:
“What is your regiment?”
I told him, for I could not see how he could get any good out of the
truth.
“Oh,” he said, “a Massachusetts man. What part?”
“Western Massachusetts, Berkshire county.”
“Your name?”
“Second Lieutenant David Stark.”
“How many men have you here?”
“I don’t know, but a lot of them and more coming.”
He spoke a few words of command to the clerk, who pulled out a big
ledger-looking book, ran his finger over its pages, and made some
answer, then resumed his interrogations.
“Why are you in the army?”
“I like it, sir.”
He smiled a wry smile, and asked, “You’ve got over that by this time?”
“Not much,” I replied defiantly.
“Ach!” he snarled. “You like it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are of the New Hampshire Starks, perhaps?”
“My folks came from there originally.”
I was amazed at his exact knowledge--and showed it.
He smiled and continued, “The Cromwell Roundhead breed!”
Then he questioned me sharply about the American army, to most of which
I replied, “I don’t know.” I think that he got little satisfaction out
of the answers.
“Did you know,” he finally said sharply, scrutinizing my face closely,
“a Lieutenant Nickerson of your regiment?”
The question, coming abruptly, threw me a little off my balance, but
I replied steadily, “I did know a person who called himself by that
name; but I should not know him now.”
“How’s that?” he inquired crisply.
“I once thought him to be a true man, and I would not like to kill him,
as I might have to do should we meet again.”
“Why?”
“He has turned traitor and spy. Such men should be shot.”
“Ach! Then you’d kill a Prussian soldier--a gentleman?”
“Yes, sir; that’s what we are here in France for!” But my own words cut
me to the heart, when I had spoken them of Jot.
With a gesture of dismissal he turned from me to one of the officers,
and made a remark that I did not understand. But his face and manner
led me to believe that he had got something out of my replies not
displeasing to him.
Sharply giving more orders, with more clicking of heels and salutes,
he entered a near-by door to his private office. I was informed,
afterwards, that this officer had, previous to the war, been a
professor in one of our New England colleges.
Under guard of the young soldier I have mentioned, I was conducted,
limping, to the street, helped through the doorway of an isolated
wall--all that was left standing of a building--and found myself in an
enclosure of barbed wire.
In this pen were other American officers and soldiers, and several
Frenchmen.
“More fish,” cried out a corporal.
I was in bad humor and replied savagely: “Speak for yourself. If you
think it is funny to be here, I don’t.”
“It’s Lieutenant Stark!” exclaimed a soldier, coming to me and
saluting. He was one of my men of yesterday’s fight.
Then a captain came forward with extended hand saying, “You made a good
fight. I was with the rescue party and saw some of it and heard more.
Were you wounded?”
“Slightly,” I said, with a motion towards the wounded arm; “but they
wouldn’t have got me, but for this sprained ankle.” And I limped
forward and sat down with my back to the wall.
“Then you didn’t surrender?”
“No, sir.”
“He ain’t that breed of cats,” said my soldier--Private George Williams.
“Then what breed of cats is he?” asked another flippantly. Prisoners
don’t stand much on ceremony.
“Tiger cat!” replied Williams. Then I saw him talking with those around
him, and I inferred that he was telling about the fight.
A lieutenant whose manner I did not like--and there are a good many
things I am not pleased with, when I am hungry--came to me, and in an
insinuating way asked, “Any chance of making a break here?”
“I haven’t thought of it,” I replied. “I have just come.”
I distrusted the man, I do not know why, except that his manner was
over sweet. Then he suggested a plan so impractical that I wondered if
he was in his senses.
“What do you think of it?” he inquired.
“Good idea!” I replied, “if you are figuring to get killed.”
I turned my back on the fellow, and made up my mind that whatever plans
might be made in the future, I would have no part in any that _he_
might have a part in; which only shows how strong my prejudices are
about people to whom I have taken a dislike.
“What are the chances for ‘chow,’ Williams?” I called.
“Haven’t seen any, or smelled a sniff of any since I got here,” he
replied. “I guess the Kaiser when he planned this war forgot that cog
in its wheels; for prisoners at least.”
It certainly looked like it, and I was hungry enough to eat a Boche
uncooked, when about four o’clock in the afternoon some wheat bread and
vegetable soup were given us--but not enough for a hungry man.
I still persisted in having a lame ankle, and if my face and actions
were to be taken in evidence, it was a corker.
I made several acquaintances among the officers and privates too during
the day, and talked with Williams about the prospects of making an
escape. To which he replied: “There ain’t any!” And I finally agreed
with him.
So I rolled up in my blankets, and went sound asleep.