"It is most important," he repeated, "that America regularly sends provisions to Belgium. Your country should feel very proud of the good it has done here." Somehow I had the idea that His Excellency was indulging in quiet amusement at my expense. He impressed me as being far too clever to make such a statement in entire sincerity. "I welcome the American Relief Committee," he said. "We are working in perfect harmony. Despite reports to the contrary, we never have had any misunderstanding. Through the American Press, please thank your people for their kindness to Belgium."
General von Bissing held out his hand; the interview was over. In the next room I saw on a little table a pot of tea and a plate of little cakes. I wondered if the Governor General really ate cakes. I bowed my way out of the rose and French gray room and walked with Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann down the marble stairs. I was thinking of a story that I hadheard of His Excellency. A few years ago he was having great difficulty in keeping orderlies; they all found him too strict. Finally he obtained a new orderly, a grim looking individual.
"What were you before you entered the army?" Von Bissing asked him.
"A lion tamer," replied the orderly.
"Good," exclaimed Von Bissing, "you stay."
Try to think of a slender, slightly stooped military man, perhaps a trifle foppish, with his sleek, brilliantined hair, sitting in a delicate gold and tapestried chair, and directing the affairs of a captured nation. His face is sallow, and his sunken eyes always seemed to smolder, and his mouth is so thin and straight, as almost to be cruel, but you feel that he is absolutely fair, and it is hard to think of him as breaking his word. I cannot imagine Governor General von Bissing doing that. I think he is ruthlessly honest, ruthlessly just, hard, a rigid disciplinarian, and scrupulously fair, and if reprisals are necessary no sentimentality will stay his hand. "They are only needle pricks," he says of seditious Belgians,—"they know why." The ideal man for a military government, his is an Iron Fist; but if the fist were of softer stuff, all Belgium would be in chaos.
Promptly at two o'clock the gray army automobile emblazoned with Prussian eagles in black, left Wilhelmstrasse. Half an hour's run—and the drivers of those army motor cars know not a speed law—and we were at garrison headquarters on Doeberitz Road. One saw a fence of white palings, a lawn surprisingly green for winter, symmetrically laid out among gray gravel walks that lead up to a square business-like house of brown stucco, over the door of which was printed "Kaiser Wilhelm Soldatenheim, 1914." Off to the right loomed a long weather-beaten line of huge tents, one of which was open, showing the tail of a Taube monoplane. Across the road behind us, unpainted barrack sheds and soldiers showed through a grove of pine trees, and then while Dr. Roediger of the Foreign Office, my escort, went to find Major General von Loebell, commanding the entire Doeberitz camp and garrison, I heard something that reminded me of the riveting machines on the skyscrapers in New York. Imagine your state of mind with twenty riveting machines, all making their infernal clatter at the same time, only each capable of double the usual noise. That is the sound that suddenly broke in upon us at Doeberitz Road, andoff in the fields we saw battery after battery of machine gun men, learning their deadly trade. While we waited Dr. Roediger's return, more guns broke loose, and by the time the General came, he could scarcely make himself heard. He began by explaining from his military point of view the Doeberitz camp.
"We have seventeen thousand prisoners here," he said, "and there are more coming every day. The war office thinks it fine to take so many Russian prisoners. Out here we don't like it," he smiled. "They are coming too fast for us. Every day we are building more houses for them, but each house costs $2500. Already we have spent nearly $800,000 in this one camp on sleeping quarters alone, and we've got twenty other prison camps in Germany, and nearly three quarters of a million prisoners. Here at Doeberitz we are building a bathing place for the prisoners that is costing $17,500, and when you figure up what it costs to feed those fellows, the expense of this camp runs up into the millions."
Perhaps to put us in the proper mental state before visiting the prison camp proper, Major General von Loebell went on to say something about the prisoners.
"The French and Russians," he explained, "are easy to handle. They don't mind working. In fact, they are always asking for something to do. And remember that whenever a prisoner does any municipal work, labor on the roads, for instance, he is paid for it, thirty or fifty pfennigs a day, and he can usethe money to buy tobacco." And for an instant the General grew wrathy. "In France and England, though, they don't pay German prisoners a cent, no matter what work they do. Our English prisoners, though"—and the General dolorously shook his head—"Oh, they are more difficult. Always they have a grievance. The first thing they asked for was a place to wash. We were glad to give it to them," and the General grinned. "The Russians never bother you for a luxury like that. Then we gave the English coffee in the morning, and they protested again; they wanted tea. Gott, I was glad enough to give them tea; it is cheaper. But when we want them to work, they sulk. Really, the Frenchmen work for us as if they enjoy it. So do the Russians. On the whole, though, we don't have much trouble here at Doeberitz." Pausing, he added: "I shall now put you in charge of Lieutenant Colonel Alberti, who will show you around the camp." And with the usual German military bow, the General bade us adieu. With the Lieutenant Colonel, a most accommodating man, we proceeded by motor down the Doeberitz Road. Near the prison sheds my cigarette burned down, and I opened the limousine window to throw out the stump. Four Russians, guarded by a soldier, were passing, and suddenly I heard an excited clamor. There, on their hands and knees, punching and cursing each other, while the soldier prodded them with his bayonet, the Russians fought for that inch of tobacco, oblivious to everything, bayonet and all, until it was won.
Leavingthem, we came to a gate in the barbed wire fences, and passed on foot through a double line of sentries into the main street of the prison camp. One saw on either side rows of long, newly erected, unpainted sheds, separated by side streets of muddy ground and fenced off from the main camp street by more barbed wire. One's first impression was that prisoners of war are among the piteous objects on the face of the earth. You see swarms of shuffling men who before the fortunes of war went against them must have looked smart and soldierly. Now in their uniforms they seemed self-conscious and absurd, sheepish almost because they had to wear regimentals in the presence of the enemy. What must have been a trim-looking British marine caught my eye. His olive drab was tattered and stained; he must have lost his cap or sold it to buy tobacco. What he wore was a battered derby, picked up Heaven knows where! It was characteristic, I afterwards learned, of the entire camp.
As we walked up the main street, groups of prisoners ran down the side streets and gathering by the barbed wire fences, stared curiously. We saw a whole battalion of English jackies, more marines, and then swarms of Russians, heavy and stupid looking. Only one enclosure, the Colonel explained, was filled with Frenchmen.
The first place that Lieutenant Colonel Alberti put at our disposal was the camp kitchen. We entered one of the long sheds and came into a steaming room, where instantly the chief cook and his assistants stoodat attention. The chief cook, following the fashion of his kind, was dressed in white from head to foot, but his assistants wore the field uniforms of Russia, smeared with grease. The eye took in a cement floor that supported three enormous caldrons, each one big enough for three men to hide in and brimming with a white-looking mixture.
"They are getting supper ready," explained the Lieutenant Colonel, and he went on to say how the prisoners were fed. "That is a stew made of cabbage and meat; you can see the pieces of meat in it. At four o'clock in the afternoon, and at six-thirty in the morning, the prisoners are given a soup similar to this. Then in the middle of the day they get sausage and bread. Of course we change the diet; very often they have coffee in the morning, also."
It did not sound very promising; nor did the stuff in the caldrons look inviting. I asked the Lieutenant Colonel if I might taste some of the stew. To my surprise he was perfectly willing; and to my further surprise I found it to be excellent. Far from being tasteless, it was evidently prepared by a good chef, and there were sufficient pieces of meat to provide ample nourishment for a man partaking of that dish twice a day; certainly he would not be underfed, and in a prison camp one does not expect delicacies.
As we left the cookroom, the Lieutenant Colonel told us that the eight thousand five hundred men in this particular section of the camp were fed in fifty minutes, a statistic suggestive of German efficiency. From the kitchen we visited one of the sheds wherethe prisoners sleep. Leading the way, the officer threw open a wooden door. Instantly some one shouted a command in Russian; there was a scuffling of feet and the prisoners jumped up from their mattresses, struck attention and saluted. At the thought of being compelled to sleep in that room, cold chills ran up one's spine. In justice to the Germans it must be said that they build the place clean; they furnished it with new clean bedding; they do everything humanly possible to keep it clean.
Given that same number of Russians, two hundred and fifty, put them in that same sized room, their mattresses in four rows, each mattress flush against the other, transport that shed into Russia and leave those men there without German supervision to make them keep reasonably clean, and you would get one result—cholera. As it is, every prisoner at the Doeberitz camp and every other prison camp in Germany—and I later visited many of them—can thank fortune that he was taken prisoner by a nation that knows how to keep things clean.
Passing through the long room with the Russians standing on either side, bewildered at the sight of foreigners, noting the many windows for ventilation, one was glad to get out into the open air. There the Lieutenant Colonel confirmed something you had been thinking.
"It's best not to get too near those fellows," he said. "We do our best to make them keep clean, but they've all got lice." Then the officer had his little joke. "For a few days before we had thesequarters ready we had to keep all nationalities together, so the Englishmen caught it from the Russians. They've been scrubbing ever since, but then they should share everything. Are they not allies?"
Walking up and down the side streets of the Russian section one saw faces pressed against the window panes, others peering from behind the doors, while others boldly came out to view the Lieutenant Colonel's guest. Here one noticed the difference in the Russian soldier. Two distinct types, one with the predominance of Tatar blood, heavy faced and tiny eyed, as devoid of expression as a pudgy Japanese; but there was the other Russian, the man from the North, more alert looking, who grinned at you as you went by, and seemed to see something funny in it.
We next came upon a temporary tent where two hundred men were quartered in a place a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. It was dark inside the tent, but by the aid of a candle that probably burned with difficulty in that air, one could see rows of excelsior mattresses packed in as close together as possible on the bare ground. The place was a nightmare, and the thought of two hundred and fifty men sleeping there was incredible. What impressed one, though, was not so much the conditions in that tent, for we could see near by a new shed, intended for them, needing only a day's work to complete it, but the policy of entire sincerity on the part of the War Ministry in permitting an American correspondent to see this section of the camp.
We then came upon the Englishmen. Their quarterswere just the same as the Russians, and as we later saw, equally as good as those occupied by the comparatively few Frenchmen at Doeberitz. The Germans had given them their quarters clean, and they had kept them clean. It was a relief to go among them. It was with an odd sensation, too, that an American heard these men, these prisoners of war, speak his own language. Like the Russians, those who had been sitting, sprang on to their feet, but there was no salute. There was none of the unctuous servility noticeable among the Slavs. There was no attempt to curry favor with the officers of the camp, and one admired the English tremendously for that. They had played the game of war, lost, and they were taking their medicine. Their attitude, you saw, as you looked down their line of faces, was admirable.
To my amazement the Lieutenant Colonel turned to me and said, "You can talk to these men if you like," adding, "I know now what they'll say to you."
And standing off he listened to the conversation with a smile.
"Well, boys, how do you like it here?"
"Rotten," was the answer given together.
I looked at the officer; he seemed not surprised.
"Where were you captured?" I asked a particularly boyish marine.
"At Antwerp, sir."
"Then you fellows are the new recruits that were sent over there?"
They all said, "Yes."
"How long were you drilled?"
"Abouttwo weeks, sir."
And one was struck with the pitiful side of the blunder that made the First Lord of England's Admiralty the laughing stock of military experts the world over. In America we had read and only half believed that Winston Churchill had taken five thousand young men, practically greenhorns, and thrown them into Antwerp, a mere handful compared to the German hosts. That needless sacrifice of men, that useless waste of five thousand, their number making them practically useless, came home now in another way. Every boy there—and they nearly all look like boys—could blame the high-hatted strategist of the Admiralty for their predicament. And many of them openly did.
"The grub here," said a voice from their ranks, "is swill; it's nothing but skilley, and poor stew at that. Slops, I calls it, sir."
Having tasted the "slops," I could not agree with him and put it down to his inherent animosity towards all things German. I should have said that Dr. Roediger of the Foreign Office seems more the good-looking, young Englishman of the university type than German; also his accent and intonation is entirely English. I noticed that when he spoke to me, the prisoners looked at him queerly. Then I saw two of them go off into a corner of the room and begin whispering; the chances are that they decided he was an English journalist who in some miraculous way had been granted permission to enter Germany and visit the Doeberitz camp. Hope iseternal with any one who is a prisoner. As we left the room, the officer going first, this was confirmed; beckoning Dr. Roediger, the two prisoners who had been whispering said to him, "When you go to England, won't you tell them over there that we get their letters all right, but that we're afraid the Germans are not going to let us have our parcels?"
Dr. Roediger asked them what they meant.
"Why, the folks write us that they are going to send us packages as Christmas presents—tobacco and things a chap can't get here. Now it would be a rotten Christmas if a chap didn't get those, wouldn't it? Can't you help us?"
Dr. Roediger assured them if any packages came they would be delivered, but the prisoners seemed to doubt this, and when we left them their faces fell. As we were going out, one of them whispered to me, "See if you can get us our Christmas packages, won't you?"
Christmas in a place like that....
Drawn up outside another of the unpainted sheds, we saw two men whose appearance instantly contrasted with the half slouch of those about them.
"You're a regular, aren't you?" I asked a tall, powerfully built man who wore the chevrons of a sergeant.
"Yes," he replied. "The boys here are just new recruits."
I caught the sympathy in his voice when he spoke of "the boys." His very manner, his stiff, unyielding, soldierly bearing, made me understand betterthan ever before what Kipling meant when he called the British soldier a king. More than ever one marveled at the system that takes men out of the London gutters and transforms them into regulars, into a sergeant who could stand amid the humiliation of that prison camp and not once forget that he was a soldier of England. That single man was one of the greatest tributes to the regular army of England that I have ever seen.
I found myself talking to a browned, deep-chested sailor, whose red insignia told me he was a gunner's mate.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised, not knowing how a man from a war ship could have been made a prisoner.
"I was with one of the English naval guns at Antwerp," he said. Then he made his complaint. It was different from the way the younger men had talked, based on a different thing, a different way of thinking; in fact, his one way—the question of discipline.
"The Germans expect me to keep good discipline here. I try to, but if they would feed us a little better, it would be easier. Every so often the lads kick on the grub."
"It isn't really bad," I said to him. "I tasted some of it."
His manner was earnest. I knew he was sincere.
"Well," he said, "I can bear up under it, but with some of the lads here it is pretty hard. They are used to better."
"But,"I argued, "they can't expect what they get at home, can they?"
He agreed with this himself, but persisted, "If they'd give us better grub, I could give them better discipline."
It seemed to be the thing that concerned him most.
As we went along talking to these English people, one heard all kind of stories. There was the marine, who, when he was captured, had seven pounds, and in ten weeks he had spent it all but one mark, buying himself little luxuries at the camp; now he was wondering what he was going to do with his money nearly all gone. There was another marine who, when I asked him why he had enlisted, did not say, "Because my country needed me," but rather, "Because I thought it would be a bit of a lark, you know." There was another fellow who had a grouch because the Germans would not let him write long letters home.
"Yes, that's the fellow," Lieutenant Colonel Alberti commented. "The first day he was here, he wrote an eighteen-page letter. The officer in charge of the camp has to read every letter sent out by the prisoners. For the first few days these fellows had nothing else to do but to sit down and write. You can imagine the result. We were inundated with letters, so we had to put a limit on them. You see they all have to be translated. Now they are allowed to write every so often."
The camp at Doeberitz Road only opened my eyes a little. Two days later I was watching the gray shape of a Zeppelin soaring two thousand metersabove our motor, as we hurried down the Kaiser Wilhelm Road towards Zossen. This time a good friend had gone to General von Lowenfeld, the Commander of Berlin, and from him had been secured the exceptional privilege to take photographs in the prison camp at Zossen.
If my first sight of Doeberitz was sinister, Zossen was farce. As our motor drew up before a gate similar to Doeberitz, we were put into a light mood by the spectacle of a baggy, red-trousered Frenchman balancing himself on a little box and nailing a gap in the wall of his own prison. He was busy nailing a strand of barbed wire to a post and near him stood another Frenchman, who looked up at him, poked him in the ribs with his stick when the sentry wasn't looking, and made faces like a mischievous boy. The humor of the situation was not out of the picture, so we afterwards learned, for the Zossen camp has a surprisingly good time of it. A handsome white-haired baron, who spoke excellent English, and who was introduced to us as the Lieutenant Baron von Maltzahn, was as genial as the spirits of the prisoners. With Captain von Stutterheim, who has charge of the Weinberger section of the huge camp, they made an escort that was willing to do everything possible to show us every detail of Zossen. One quickly saw that the Captain and the Baron, who was the aide of the General in Command of the Zossen garrison, were proud of the camp.
Luncheon is served at twelve.
Prisoner making flowers for the chapel altar.
Calisthenics instead of rifle practice.
WITH FRENCH PRISONERS AT ZOSSEN.
One saw at once that to all exterior appearances Weinberger camp was just like Doeberitz. There werethe same dirt center street, same side streets, the same rows of unpainted sheds. But there was a difference that we later saw. At Doeberitz, as far as the eye can see, the flat land stretches away unrelieved only here and there by trees, but this Weinberger section of the Zossen camp is set down in a pine forest, as the Captain boasted, "One of the healthiest places near Berlin." Here, although the same number of men live in a shed—two hundred and fifty—they seem cleaner, which is because here they are mostly Frenchmen, although, to our delight, we later found a streetful of their black allies, the Turcos. At Zossen, too, I found a few Russians and Belgian civilians, although in Belgium, as I came to know, civilians and soldiers are synonymous—both firing upon the Germans. As we walked up the street, we were surprised at the few German soldiers.
"We don't need so many," the Baron explained to me. "Eighty guard, eight thousand prisoners. That's only one per cent., you see. And then over there," and he pointed to a tall wooden scaffolding, "we are going to have a searchlight on that, and another on the other side of the camp, so if everything happens to go wrong with the electric plant we can sweep the searchlights on the camp streets. Also in case of a disturbance we are going to have some rapid firers and a big gun. Over there, now," and he led me towards the fences, triple fences of barbed wire, "one of those wires on the inner fence—you see the soldiers and prisoners are protected from it by the outer wires—one of those wires is charged heavilywith electricity, so that anybody trying to escape will be electrocuted. The prisoners have been warned."
As we continued on up the street, we were impressed by the number of Frenchmen. Everywhere one saw the baggy red trousers and the Baron told us that they were all prisoners from Maubeuge and Rheims. I noticed that squads of Frenchmen were marching up and down in command of a corporal and extending their ranks to go through the military setting-up drill. They seemed to move with a jaunty air, which contrasted with their nondescript appearance, and which spoke wonders for their spirit.
"They weren't like that at Doeberitz," I said to Captain Stutterheim. "There everybody slouched around. Here they have some life. How do you explain it?"
The Captain didn't know. "They are taken the best of care of. They have plenty of money. We give them all the privileges we can and they seem to have made up their minds to enjoy themselves."
Whereupon one decided that this marked difference in the spirit of the two camps was due to the fact that here they were nearly all Frenchmen, ready to enjoy life no matter where they were.
"Yesterday," remarked the Captain, "there were 6000 marks sent in the mail for these prisoners, and last week we had a day when 9000 marks were received. We are careful to do everything we can to make them comfortable; for instance, the French Catholics have streets to themselves; so have the Protestants. We also separate the Russians and thePoles. We have to be very careful to keep the Turcos in a street of their own. They don't like the French, now, since they've heard that a Holy War has been decreed in Constantinople."
Eating is one of the best things the Germans do, so it did not surprise me when the Captain led the way to the prisoners' kitchen. It looked the same as at Doeberitz, only here the huge cauldrons were filled with a whitish semi-liquid substance that made you wonder, until the cook explained that it was rice. I was deciding that the prisoners were fed more substantially over at Doeberitz, when the Captain remarked, "We have many Catholics here, you know, and to-day is Friday, so we give them rice instead of a meat stew." He went on to explain that the men received a pound and a half of bread every third day, as well as receiving the sausage and soup diet of Doeberitz. The men were doing things, not slouching around. They were either making little articles or playing games. I saw them weaving slippers of straw and cutting out things with pocket knives; in one corner of the room a bit of gay color met the eye. A soldier was making paper flowers. In poor French I asked him what the flowers were for.
"They are for the chapel altar," he replied with dancing eyes.
I turned to the Captain. "What! Have you got a chapel here for these fellows?"
"You will soon see it," he said. "They built the altar themselves, and among the captured soldiers are three French priests."
Atthe end of the kitchen street I noticed an adjoining structure, which the Captain explained was the canteen. In there I found a wonderfully equipped little place, where all sorts of articles were for sale. Soldiers were sitting around just as farmers hang around a country store and talk. There was a gossipy air of snugness about the little place that made one think it belonged in the midst of a well fed garrison and not in a prison camp. There was a counter behind which stood a German salesman, assisted by a French interpreter, and this little canteen bore no relation whatever to the system of company stores in vogue in the mining camps of America. In other words, it was run to give the men the best possible for their money.
On a blackboard I saw chalked different prices, 10 Cigarettes for 10 Pfg., which is almost five for a cent. I saw sponges strung on a string, which convinced me that the men in the camp were doubly anxious to keep clean. I was reminded of Coney Island by a little griddle of sizzling hot dogs, which could be bought for two cents each. I saw a basket full of segments of thick German wurst, 5 cents for a piece 2 inches in diameter and 4 inches long. They even sold butter in that little store ½ lb. for 12 cents, cheaper than you can get it in America. Sides of bacon, hams and long dangling wurst hung from the ceiling, and near them a wooden aeroplane tried to fly, while below on the floor, a pair of wooden shoes waited the owner who had the necessary 45 cents. On a table in a corner I saw where the games camefrom, checkers and cards, absurdly cheap. They even sold beer. I remarked on this.
"It's not an intoxicating beer," the Captain explained. "It's what we call in Germany—Health Beer. It is used in cases of illness when a doctor wants to give a patient strength."
It was after we had inspected a little room which one of the French soldiers had converted into a barber shop, where one might be shaved for 10 centimes, and where if one had 50 centimes he might be tempted by a sign that read, "Latest Parisian Haircut here"; it was after we had talked with the sparkling-eyed barber, happy these days—was not money plentiful among the prisoners?—that we came upon the sculptor.
Opening a wooden door upon which was written in French that only officers might enter, the Captain bowed us into the last place that you would expect to find in a prison camp. Had the damp odor of clay not told you, you would have seen from the unfinished gray pedestal that stood by the window, that this little twelve by twelve room was a studio. There, standing beside his work, a make-shift sculptor's apron over his soiled red and blue uniform, stood a young French soldier. The Baron explained to me that in 1908 this man had won the second prize at Rome. He told me that his name was Robert L'Aryesse, and in my notebook he wrote his autograph so that I might not misspell his name. I asked him if he knew Paul Manship, the young American sculptor, who only a few years ago took the prize at Rome. At Manship'sname the Frenchman's face lit up and he began eagerly to talk of the quarter where they had all lived in Italy. How was Manship? What was he doing? Oh, he had been very wonderful, that young American! The admiration of Monsieur L'Aryesse was great.
The Frenchman was so happy to hear news from an old comrade that he forgot that my command of his language was elementary and launched forth in a glowing appreciation of Manship which left me far behind.
A photographer meanwhile caught sight of the statue of a Turk standing on the shoulders of a Russian soldier with arm extended (the Baron explained it was to be used as a guidepost to the Zossen prison), and with a keen sense for a good human interest picture began to focus his camera.
M. L'Aryesse was in alarm; it would never do to take a picture. What if his friends should see it! He began wringing his hand and then nervously running his fingers through his hair. To think of such a specimen of his work being photographed and published in America. But the photographer assured him that the statue was wonderful, and in an incredibly short time a flashlight powder boomed in the room and the job was done.
From the studio we walked up to the end of the street and entered a shed where a swarm of roughly-clad prisoners divided into groups were standing around a post pulling at something. They were braiding straw. One of them exhibited a round matmade of braided straw about five inches in diameter, which, it appeared, were mats to put in the hoofs of the horses to keep out the snow.
And again you marveled at the German system, this obvious weeding out of men who knew how to braid straw and putting them to work making a winter supply for the army horses. These men were the worst type of Belgians from the Antwerp slums and from the farms. One black-haired, evil-looking fellow had two yellow bands sewn to the sleeve of his coat, the badge of their spokesman and officer.
This black-haired gentleman was known as Lulu. Lulu was very proud of his rank. I doubted at first whether the man had a forehead; his black hair hung low; he was of the type—and there were many more in that room like him—of the hereditary criminal. Our gunmen would look like saints in comparison with this apache of the slums. Through an interpreter I was permitted to talk to the Belgians, and I chose the mildest looking man of them all. He said that he was perfectly satisfied to be where he was. The other men in the room nodded assent. This puzzled me a little, for they looked sullen enough to be unafraid to speak their minds even in the presence of a gray coated Prussian officer. But the Belgian explained, "Here we have a place to sleep, we get food, and we are not in danger of being killed."
Another black-browed fellow volunteered his story. "When the war began I was a reserve. I was told to hide my uniform and shoot at the Germans whenever I got a chance. Then I was called into regularservice, and I put on my uniform and fought in the ranks. After that, with hundreds of my comrades, I was told to put on my civilian clothes again and go back home or any place where I could hide and take shots at any stray German soldiers I could see."
This seemed to me to be a confirmation of the German charges, that soldier civilians had been making war upon them.
At the other extremity of the street I found the other feature of the camp. Here were the Turcos. Dressed in outlandish costumes I saw some still wearing the burnooses of their tribes, others natty little, light blue, gold-embroidered jackets, some with the red fez, others with turbans, a motley collection that did not look at all the terrible Turco we had heard about. It happened to be what Captain Stutterheim called "Lice day," and thoroughly enjoying it the Turcos were standing in the street beating their blankets.
The leader of the Belgians was Lulu; but the Turks had a handsome gentleman who looked as if he would cut your throat for two cents, who answered to the name of Jumbo. Like Lulu, Jumbo was very proud of the two yellow stripes sewn on his arm. It was Lulu who posed his comrades for the photographer, arranging them with a nice sense of values. And when I looked the length of that line, glanced from one brutish face to another, I need no other confirmation of the statement that out of two hundred Turcos at the Zossen camp one in every fourhad been captured with ghastly trophies in his possession. The same charge of savagery has been made against the Turk, but from everything I can learn about the Turkish soldier—and here in Berlin I have talked to three American correspondents who have traveled with Turkish armies—there is a vast difference between the German trained Turkish soldier, and the French Turco.
Presently we selected a grinning, black villain and the most dapper Frenchman in the camp. All his comrades roared with laughter when they understood, and the whole procession came up the camp street as if they were going to a workman's Sunday picnic. Nicely posed, they made a splendid picture, which provoked the Baron's"Allies!"and roars of deep-throated Germanic laughter.
Possibly with a stage-manager's instinct to relieve the setting, the Captain walked us a short distance to a model little hospital camp in the pine woods. The surgeon in charge amazed us by saying that fifty per cent. of the captured French soldiers were tubercular. After walking with the wounded through the pines, we returned to the camp. We passed Frenchmen busy at landscape gardening. It seemed incredible. On every camp street they had made a long box design of evergreen and lettered to read the name of the company and the regiment.
It was then that I saw the man who had been making the paper flowers leave his shed and cross the street. Remembering what he had told me that the flowers were made for the chapel, I suggested thatwe go there. Following the soldier, we found ourselves in an anteroom at one end of a scrupulously clean shed. From the anteroom a door opened into a long unpainted room, at the far end of which I saw a crude altar. I noticed a square of red cloth of some cheap material, half covering the wall, and against this, in white and gold relief stood different figures of worship, candles, crucifixes, a host covered with a roughly cut piece of the same red muslin, and surmounting it all, high on the wall, an Almighty crown.
I saw the soldier with the flowers enter by a distant door and give them to the priests. When the priest handed him a plain vase and let him fill it himself, the soldier seemed ready to cry out with happiness. Silently the three figures at the altar went about their devotions. Again the door opened, a line of prisoners appeared, walking on tip-toe, their rough boots creaking; they filed across the room, and making two lines before the altar, dropped on their knees, their lips moving in a monotonous monotone of prayer. Rising, they tip-toed out and another file came in, and among them the vivid garments of a Turco. Making a sign to the Captain, I left the chapel. Presently they brought the Turco to me. He could speak French. I asked him why he had turned Christian and he said something to the effect that he had seen the way to the one real religion. He was explaining volubly about his conversion just before a battle in France, when the Captain pulled off the Turco's fez and grabbed a little braided pigtail concealed beneath.
"Christian,eh?" laughed the Captain. "What are you still wearing that thing for, then?"
The Turco began to grin.
"This religion," he said, "makes it pleasant among the Frenchmen, and then when I get home—well, how can I be a good Mohammedan without this?" and lovingly he patted his braided hair.
Prisoners of war? Are they ill or well treated? I leave my reader to judge the facts. I have tried to give you accurate pictures of the varied camps, typical of the German system. Of the camps in England and France, I do not know; of the camps in Russia no man knows. To silence the stories of ill-treatment that official press bureaus intermittently produce, why not apply a remedy?
Why not standardize the prison camps? As it is a task for humanitarians why should not the suggestions come from Switzerland, the home of the Red Cross, with the tacit understanding and backing up of the United States. A standard set of prison camp recommendations could be drafted recommending certain quantities and kinds of food, certain conditions for sleeping quarters, certain limitations to the enforced labor. The old Geneva document is out of date; its compilers could not foresee a World War; no nation to-day could meet its recommendations; the problem of handling prisoners of war has become too vast.
The Russians were retreating! In Pschoor's our waiter told us; on the Linden great pennants began to appear; an hour and Berlin had bedecked itself in flags.... The Russians were retreating! In front of the newspaper offices the crowds stood twenty deep, their faces turned to a bulletin which said that Hindenburg was driving the enemy from East Prussia. Magically, vendors selling little photographic buttons of the German hero, swarmed on to the streets."Bilder von Hindenburg! Bilder von Hindenburg!"
The great cafés which an hour ago had been empty, were suddenly filled. The air was tense with excitement. At every table the "beer strategists" were discussing this newest of great victories, which they were calling a second Tannenberg. Unable even to get a place of vantage from which to overlook this ecstasy of patriotism, I returned to Adlon just in time to receive a message from a blue-coated page boy; Major von Herwarth, of the General Staff, wanted me at the telephone.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Fox," the Major was saying. "I am very happy to say that everything has been arrangedand that you start to-night for the East." Thanking Major von Herwarth, who has done everything in his power to help every open-minded American correspondent locate the facts, I hurried to my room to get my luggage together.
And an hour later we were completing arrangements for the most amazing piece of reporting done in this war. With the cooperation of the Foreign Office, the Staff had decided to permit Herbert Corey and myself to send collaborated reports from the front to America. Subsequently filed at different points on the battle line, they went by military telegraph into Germany, thence by the regular Government lines to Berlin, thence by the great wireless to Sayville, Long Island. Only a limited number of words a day are sent by the transatlantic wireless but the Foreign Office gave us one hundred and fifty of these which is why thirty-seven American cities read as swiftly as science could bring it to them, the truth of the terrific smash of Hindenburg's army.
That night, my only luggage, a change of clothing wrapped in a sleeping bag—for we had been cautioned to reduce what we had brought to the barest necessities—I went at eleven to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof where I met the officer who was to take me to the front. I found Baron von Stietencron, a captain in the 5th Regiment of the Prussian Guards, the crack infantry of Germany, to be a light spirited devil-may-care type of officer, gifted with a touch-and-go sense of humor, high strung and imaginative. Since the war he had let a reddish beard grow aroundhis chin but one could see he was young and never happy in the field unless he was leading a charge. Indeed, later that night I learned that Baron von Stietencron had been shot through the throat when the Germans stormed at St. Quentin!
Troops swarmed on the platform; new recruits going out to fill the gaps in the line, officers rejoining their regiments. The train for Königsberg glided into the arc lighted shed; we managed to get a first class compartment.
"I tried to get sleeping accommodation," apologized Baron von Stietencron, who spoke good American, "but we were too late."
To the waving and calling of good-bys, the train glided past the pallid faces of soldiers' loved ones, and clanking over the switches, turned its headlight towards the Eastern night. It was near three before any of us thought of sleeping. In that short space of time we came to know Baron von Stietencron amazingly well. And I heard some things of war that made my blood run cold.
"The Russians are in retreat now at this point," explained the Baron, tracing his finger over one of those marvelously minute staff maps. "We arrive at Königsberg in the morning and from there we shall go south to Lyck. It was at Lyck that the first big engagement of the battle took place."
Lyck from which only a few days ago the Russians had been sent flying! There was no bed that night; we slept sitting but the drowsy rumble of the car wheels seemed to be the clatter of the Russian retreat and when the big light glared through the windowinto my eyes, I had to awake fully before realizing that it was not a searchlight seeking out the retreating soldiers of the Czar, but only the station lamp at Dirschau.
Burying Russians on the East Prussian frontier.
Reinforcements following our motor into Russia.
Morning found us in the beery dining-room of the old station at Königsberg, breakfasting on coffee and wurst, and watching through the window a bivouac of young soldiers who had spent the night outside. We were walking down the platform to take the train for Korschen, when we saw a little boy tug at his mother's arm and stare with mouth agape into the sky. There to the south what seemed to be a stub of black pencil was slowly dissolving into the snow gray clouds. "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" In a clamor the waiting rooms emptied but already the great bag was a thing of the mists, vanishing, with its cargo of death, towards Warsaw.
Half an hour and we were on the train for Korschen.
Running almost due south from Königsberg, the railroad enters Masurenland where swamps and lakes still hold the Russian dead of those terrible August days, when Tannenberg turned East Prussia red. There the empty yellowish fields, undulating from hillock to gully, across the picture that the car window framed, bristled but five days before with Russian lines. There at Korschen where we changed cars, they had burned the station. There we saw on flat cars, ready to be pulled to some point behind the front, three black painted motors that the Russianshad abandoned in their flight; coupled to them a heavy truck, bearing a long German howitzer; beside that a Belgian freight car, marked Louvain. Somehow it seemed quite natural that they all should be there—the Russian motors, the Belgian car, the German gun.
It was just as we were leaving Korschen that a smiling slender young man who wore glasses, bowed outside the compartment door, and said: "You're an American, aren't you?" And when I told him yes, he said: "I am too." He went on to say that he was from Passaic, and I found myself recalling Gus Schwing of Newark, the Lieutenant Brevet whom we had met in Brussels and wondering if all the Americans in the German army came from New Jersey.
"I am an architect in Passaic," he said. "I happened to be in Germany on August 3rd. Before coming to America I had served my time in the army, but I, being born in Germany, offered my services at the outbreak of war to the government. They are using me to go behind the army, building up what has been destroyed. I have just come from France where we're rebuilding everything behind our battle line."
Captain von Stietencron, who had noticed my amazement, smiled and added, "In France and Belgium our soldiers planted the fields with a winter crop, last fall, and they're planting an autumn crop now."
Which seems to be a case of harvesting machinesfollowing the howitzers. At Stürlack where the railroad strikes due east for Lötzen we were made to feel the growing intimacy of the front, by being shunted on a side while troop trains rumbled by for an hour. It being four o'clock then and not having been able to eat since morning, the Baron led a foraging expedition into a track-side farmhouse, which resulted in more wurst and heavy black bread. I can still see the expression in that old farmer's eyes as, opening the cottage door, he saw the Baron outside. It was as if the gray officer's cape, hanging over the Baron's broad shoulders, at once made him in the eyes of that old man, something superhuman and to be idolized. And I did not wholly understand this until I learned that the Russians had spent a rioting night in the farmer's house and that thenceforth to him, the German troops had become avengers and deliverers.
"They are swine, these Russians," he told the Baron. "Further on you will see."
Beginning with Lötzen, the railroad became wholly military. No passenger cars went further than Lötzen, a direct feeding point to the front. Learning, upon leaving our car that a military train would pull out for Lyck in a few minutes, we ran down the tracks, stumbling on the ties, for it had become dark, trying to find a place to get on. But every freight car filled with food and ammunition was sealed and even on the flat cars there was not room to stand between the caissons and guns.
"Next to the engine," some one shouted, but even as we ran towards that car, where we now saw thepale glow of lantern light framed by an open door, the train pulled out.
"It's an hour," remarked Captain von Stietencron, "before there's another."
Picking our way back over the rails we made towards the dimly lighted station, its platform swarming with soldiers, gleaming with bayonets as they moved in a path of light. Entering a dingy waiting room, we stood beside a crowded lunch counter while the Baron went in to see the station Kommandant. Around the little stained topped table officers were eating dinner.
I wondered first at the contrast of their uniforms stained and worn with the field, and the immaculate cleanliness of their persons, at their finger nails which each man must have manicured, for they shone, at their clean shaven faces, and glistening combed hair; one fancied their eyebrows were brushed too. These officers in the well worn uniforms stained by six months of field service had obviously made their toilettes as for the opera.
We saw Captain von Stietencron coming out of the Kommandant's office.
"There will be no troop train leaving for Lyck," he said, "until to-morrow. However, in forty minutes a big supply train is going and if you can stand riding in a freight car," and the Baron paused with the unspoken question.
"Anything at all," I assured him. "When do we reach Lyck?"
"With a supply train," he smiled, "one neverknows." Whereupon, being a soldier, and having a chance to eat, the Baron proposed taking advantage of this chance.
A steaming platter of an amazing good goulash, and we were picking our way over the rails to find the freight car in which we were to ride. We found it coupled to the engine and behind us, car after car, filled with ammunition, fodder and food, stretched endlessly up the track. We were in a freight car that had been painted inside and fitted with three long benches. From the white roof, two lanterns swung their flickering light across the brown walls, and at the farther end near a stiflingly hot round stove, I saw a big pile of straw where doubtless the train crew spent the night.
So we sat under the swinging lanterns, while the light car rattled and shook as with a disorder. Time never passed more quickly, listening to the Captain's stories of the war. And later I knew of many things concerning that first great drive into France, of how Namur was taken by storm, but the Iron Cross that hung from Von Stietencron's coat did not appear in the narrative, although I referred to it many times.
And with the shadows trembling on the wall and the two tired soldiers sleeping in the straw, it seemed the way to go to war, not as in the West, in a train on a soft plush seat. I involuntarily shuddered at the thought of the potential death we carried in the cars behind, the tons of ammunition coming now to make Russian dead. As the engine drew its heavy, dangerous load slowly on, through the partly openeddoor, I saw a drift of white falling snow beginning to blow past us in the night.
By the time we reached Windennen, the fields had turned white and when a soldier told us we would be delayed here twenty minutes, we got out. A sullen murmur, almost as of animals, met the ear, and walking up the tracks in the direction of the murmur, we saw presently, the glisten of bayonets and beyond that in the obscured light of a station lamp a horde of Russian prisoners. Herded within the confines of a barbed wire square that gave the impression of having hastily been built as aGefangenenlager, the Russians watched our approach with suspicious eyes. Splendid types of the human animal, deep chested, tall fellows, with mighty physiques and stupid faces, the Russians of that greater Russia, who exist in the fiction of those who portray the "beautiful Russian soul." One recognized the great coats of sheepskin and goat, the round shaggy fur hats, that had succeeded the natty peaked caps of the first mustering in; one recognized the Russian smell which sickens you in the great prison camps all over Germany. As we looked at them the muttering ceased and uneasily they shifted about seeming to be waiting for something and instinctly you thought, upon realizing the utter ignorance of their faces waiting for a sentence of death.
"Over here are the officers," remarked Captain von Stietencron, and we followed him to a separate enclosure where a yellow bearded Russian glowered at us from the doorway of what had been a signal tower,while another drew his tall form up straight and smiled. The Captain spoke to this man in German. I caught the words: Doctor of Medicine, Esthland, which is one of the Baltic provinces of Russia, where five centuries ago the inhabitants were German.
"As a surgeon," the Captain was saying to tall, smiling, beardless Russian, "you might be returned to your country. There is a possibility."
Emphatically the Russian shook his head.
"No," he replied. "I've had enough of their army. I want to remain in Germany."
And then both evidently having interest in some proper noun that happened to fall into their conversation, they talked with increasing pleasure and speed.
"Queer," mused Von Stietencron, as we walked back to the freight car. "That Russian's father is the priest who gave me my first communion—and I meet him here."
But then anything is possible in this war.
From Lötzen to Lyck, by rail is twenty-five kilometers; in times of peace, the average passenger train takes little more than half an hour. In times of war, the run of a heavy supply train such as ours, is about an hour. We left Lötzen before seven; four hours and Lyck was still away. Rattling along, jumping the switches into sidings while coaches filled with troops rushed clanking past, faintly luminous phantoms in the snowy night, stopping at one little station after another, the weirdest ride of my life, even before we came to Iucha.
The village of Iucha, typical of that section of EastPrussia which is known as Masurenland, hides behind the trees half a mile from the railroad. There being forty minutes before our train would leave, we gratefully accepted Julius the station master's invitation to visit his house. It would be cozy there. "Just up the track aways," he said. Imagining a comfortable half hour of lounging on some pillowed German chair, we followed the station master who led the way with a lantern. Outside his house, a squat two floor, stone structure, I noticed in the yard, a sofa, from which the plush cover had been removed. "A frugal man," I thought; "saving it no doubt for something else."
We followed him into the house. Nauseated by a stench we stared bewildered into a room. In the lantern's light, it was a place of pillage and filth. Torn papers made soft the floor, the walls seemed ragged with torn pictures, hanging shredlike from their frames—torn plush covers from old chairs, torn curtains—everything torn, broken or slashed.
"The Russians," he remarked, "they lived in my home," and I thought his eyes filled. "I lived here fifteen years. My boy was born here."
Following the station master into the room where the Russians had eaten, I saw the little brass meat cans of the Russian commissary, strewn around the floor amid an overpowering clutter of cooked meat and decaying vegetables. I opened a little closet in the wall and stood looking at something that my electric torch picked out on the floor. It was a pair of cow's hoofs, cut off a little below the knees. Probably leftthere until they got ripe enough to be cooked in a stew.
We found every room in that little home destroyed and filthy, and as we made our way across the snow to the village, we felt certain that we were to look upon even more depressing scenes. Little Iucha, a pretty place on a crest of the rolling country, we found to be utterly and wantonly devastated. We learned there was no fighting in Iucha, yet home after home we found destroyed. We visited the shop of G. Geydon, and found all the goods missing from his shelves, all the counters smashed, all his business papers torn and strewn on the floor. We went into another store, where amid a ruin of splintered wood, stood the owner's safe, blown open as by cracksmen.
In another house, a private dwelling, we entered a room that the Russian officers must have used as a council chamber, for chairs were drawn around one end of a long table. Beside the table, on the floor, I noticed a Russian map of this section of Germany. Here in this room, beyond doubt, the staff officers were in conference when the alarm rang through the town—"The Germans are coming!" Everywhere were signs of the panic in which they had fled.
"On that hill over there," said the station master, pointing across the snow, "the Russians had a trench. The morning after they retreated, we went up there and found it filled with loot and the dead bodies of three good women of the village whom they had taken up there, outraged, and slain."
"Howlong," I asked him, "were the Russians here?"
"From November sixth," he replied, "to February twelfth."
Six days ago! The trail was getting hot. As we passed the station, I looked in at a window and saw sitting on the floor there, their backs sliding down on the wall, a room filled with sleeping German soldiers, obviously two machine gun squads, for the guns were in the middle of the room; and beside this another room where in the light of a candle stub, under officers were playing cards with ten pfennig pieces as the stakes. Feeling as though I had been walking through a dream, I followed the others back to the car.
It was after midnight when somebody said we were in Lyck and clambering down from the car, we began packing our way across the tracks towards the station. Even at a distance we could perceive the marks of destruction, with one jagged wall leaning against the night. Leading the way past the burned building, Captain von Stietencron asked us to wait while he went into a rude shack where a light burned. Out of the night stalked a shadowy form and the electric eye of a powerful torch gleamed in my face, hesitated and darkened, while with a "Gute Nacht!" the shadowy form stalked on. It was the Lyck greeting—friend or foe?
In a few minutes, the Captain called us to come into the little shack.
"Be good enough to wait here," he said, "while I go out and find the officer who was to meet us inLyck, and tell us where we will be quartered for the night."
He was gone and we were looking around the little board walled room. In a darkened corner I discerned the sleeping forms of three soldiers and along a wooden shelf, sat two others with heavy lidded eyes, field telephones clamped to their heads. A large white shaded lamp, evidently from the same house as the sofa on which we sat and the three upholstered chairs, stood upon a rough board table in the center of the room. Getting up and walking around, I saw that the wooden shelf had been the table for the Russian field telegraph, for two of their despatches obviously left there in the excitement of retreating, had been pasted by the Germans on the wall.
The time passed with Captain von Stietencron plodding somewhere through the snow. A young officer came in, a big handsome fellow, who looked at me in polite surprise, and seating himself at the table, began to write a letter. I saw that his pencil was of gold and flashing with little diamonds.
"An American, I take it," he said after a pause. "I know your country well. I like it." I talked with him about the cities he had visited while he hesitated over his letter. "It is so difficult," he remarked, "when you are writing your wife from the front. You want to tell her all the news, and then," with a grim smile, "you don't."
We watched him deliberating long over the composition of the note which, finally sealing, he gave to a soldier and sped him away.
"Iam leaving now for Russia," he said, drawing on his great coat of beaver; "I must be at headquarters by morning. Good night, I am most happy to have chanced to meet you."
We heard the muffling snort of his motor die away in the snowy night. It was after three before the Baron returned.
"I am so sorry," he apologized, "but there has been a mistake. They know nothing here about us. We must go in the morning to the —th Army headquarters at Goldap. And now," and the Baron looked about him in dismay, "we must sleep."
So we stretched our sleeping bags on the floor of the shack and in a moment were sleeping like the soldiers, whom not even a cannon could awaken....
I awoke to find the brown coats of Russian soldiers passing outside the window. Rubbing the drowsiness out of my eyes, I saw follow, larger men in goat and sheepskins, and then a squad of black hatted, slit-eyed Siberians, a squad of strapping fair haired Finns. A guard of mature lookingLandsturmcomplacently puffing at big German pipes were watching them shoveling away the snow.
It was the second night I had not been able to take my clothes off, and as for the civilized luxuries, given a tooth brush, a morning shave is not a matter of grave concern.
"Roll up your bag," advised Captain von Stietencron, "and leave it here. We'll go to the Officers' Casino for coffee. There a motor will meet us. Wecan pick up the baggage here and then we start for Goldap."
As we walked down the long shaded street that seemed to be the main street of Lyck, a gray transport train of "prairie schooners," slowly but steadily rattled by. The way was strewn with discarded cartridge clips and smashed rifles. On the walls of the houses we began to see the spatter of shrapnel.
"This is where General von Buelow's army broke through," explained the Captain. "One division of our soldiers rolled up four Russian divisions here and put them in retreat for the frontier."
An automobile of the Flying Corps shrieked past. We came into a zone of looted shops. We entered a store where bottled liquors had been sold, a chaos now of smashed glass. On the day of the battle when all discipline flew to the winds the Russians had evidently sought their solace or courage in vodka. We became aware that not a house nor store in Lyck had escaped their pillage. As we crossed a little public park we found they had vented their revenge at defeat by smashing every bench in the square. Since we learned that no Germans had remained in the town of Lyck, and no sniping could have been possible, this orgy of broken shop windows, blown up safes, and robbery, before our eyes, was the indisputable evidence of Russian barbarism.
We had our coffee in a little inn that had been the Russian Officers' Casino where a squad of Germans were already at work cleaning out the filth. Blackcoffee, black bread, in a room where the wall was riddled with bullets, from the pistols of drunken Russian officers who had sat there making a target of a portrait of the German Emperor, now lying on the floor. A tired officer of the Hussars came in as we left and I heard him say to Von Stietencron, "So their officers were here, were they?" And Von Stietencron replied: "I'm afraid they were as bad as their men...."
We climbed into the automobile, one of the gray-green army cars that I had seen in the West, and in a few minutes we were rushing by the never ending transport train. We left Lyck with its pillaged houses and shelled walls behind and swept across the open country. But we could not put the war behind us. We overtook a long shuffling column of Russian prisoners and further on, the Germans who were slightly wounded walking with almost a springy step in contrast to the dispirited Russians. We passed another of the gray supply trains, where the sleepy horses of the Uhlan escort pranced on its flanks. We came to a bridge which the engineers were rebuilding, and had to make a detour, crossing further up the stream beside a burned mill, its twisted, charred, water wheel a mute witness of the devastation that the Russians have brought to this land.
On the left the ground fell away into a gully and on the bottom of this I noticed a farmer's sled, the horse in a dead tangle beside it. I noticed a second sled, a third, a fourth; apparently these sleds having been meton the road by the beaten Russians were hurled with their drivers into the gully below.
As we drove into the great square at Goldap, a "goulash cannon," one of the German field kitchens, was smoking. It was the only smoke we saw in this once busy town of eight thousand people. We seemed to be standing in a burned sepulcher for all around us the houses were black with fire and on the streets no human thing stirred, save soldiers.
"I must go to the Kommandant," said the Captain, and noticing that I was staring at the desolation, he added, "There was no fighting in Goldap, not a shot. All this that you see has been done by the Russians."
I wondered if there would be a roof to shelter us. Where could the German general and his staff have their headquarters? It seemed impossible that they could find a single habitable house in this awful desolation. We left the motor and walked around. On one of the side streets we questioned one of the victims of Russian brutality. She found us another. And we heard from their own lips black tales of Russian savagery and violation of defenseless mothers and daughters—too ghastly for these pages.
I saw Captain von Stietencron coming across the square. He looked perturbed.
"I cannot understand it," he said. "There is no Oberkommandant here and in the office of the Etappen Kommando they told me that I must find a Rittmeister Tzschirner."
We went with Von Stietencron to find the Rittmeister,which means Captain of Cavalry. We found him standing beside a long rakish motor car, outside a looted bank. Von Stietencron held a long conference with the officer at the end of which I thought the Baron looked a trifle disappointed.
"I must say good-by to you," he said, coming over. "New orders from the staff. I must return to Berlin, and Rittmeister Tzschirner of General Hindenburg's staff will be your officer from now on."
I remembered that first night in the train to Königsberg, how Von Stietencron was constantly reiterating his boyish delight in the trip. And now with a glum face he was saying good-by. "Look me up when you return to Berlin," he said. "We'll have dinner together," and waving a farewell from the gray car he disappeared down the road.
My new guide and councilor, Rittmeister Tzschirner, was a short, springy, fair haired, young officer, of the ideal cavalry build. I saw that his were the cold steady eyes of the fighter, yet not without a twinkle, and the good natured mouth that the little mustache could not hide, suggested that here again we were in luck—another of these wonderful German officers with a sense of humor.
"Captain von Stietencron," I remarked, "said that headquarters were no longer here."
"No," said Tzschirner, "they have moved up with the pursuit of the Russians. We start now, if you like, for Suwalki, Russia."
If we liked! Suwalki was on the very dust of the Russian retreat.
"Itis fifty kilometers to Suwalki," said the Rittmeister; "we should make our arrival there by seven o'clock."
He must have forgotten that it was on the line of communications.
As we set out on this road it was growing dark. Turning in a southerly direction toward Kowahlen we began a ride through a vague, darkening country, peopled—except when our searchlight picked them up—with indistinct beings. Through the trees that fringe Goldap on the east, there gleamed a huge campfire that spread its yellow light on a ruined wall; as long as we could, we watched the black forms that must have been soldiers, passing across the flames. The motor rumbled on; signs of the retreat began to appear. In the ditch beside the road, I saw a dead horse, a second dead horse, a third dead horse. An abandoned Russian cannon leaned against the night, its long howitzer barrel pointing an angle of ruin into the sky. One thought of that as a symbol of the Russian rout.
Along the road there commenced a strew of clothing, a trail of discarded hats and coats, the dirty brown of the Russian soldiery. I saw rifles, cartridge bones, single shoes and then a broken caisson, a hooped roofed transport, overturned in the ditch; and then even whiter in the failing light, the scarred trees torn with shrapnel and shell.
"Did your artillery harass their retreat?" I asked Rittmeister Tzschirner.
"Oh, yes," he replied. "It was very fine."
Andthe strewn débris of war continued in a silent clutter of horror; and an inky darkness closed round shutting it all out; and we sat listening to the motor's rumble. Where were the dead? In the fields? We strained our eyes but the damp night was impassable; yet we felt they were there.
"Rittmeister," I asked suddenly, "were many men killed here?"
"Oh, yes. The losses of the Russians were very great. Our artillery shot very well. I cannot give you the exact number. We do not know. The Russians did not wish us to know the regiments engaged so they carried away their dead. I mean they carried away as many as they could; but our soldiers came very fast and the Russians had not always the time. Yes, they left many dead but we cleared the road of them."