CHAPTER 11

UP THE MOSELLE AND INTO CONQUERED GERMANY

"Judex ergo cum sedebit 
Quidquid latet, apparebit
 Nil, inultum remanebit."

CELANO.

"THE Third Army, which was to march into Germany as the army of occupation, was all in place on the 15th of November. My regiment was bivouacked in what had once been a wood, northeast' of shell-shattered Verdun. The bleakest of bleak north winds whistled over the hilltops, whirling the gray dust in clouds. The men huddled around fires or burrowed into cracks in the hillside. Here we prepared as well as we could for our move forward.

Before dawn on the 17th of November, the infantry advanced in two parallel columns.

By sunrise we were over the German lines and the brown columns were winding down the white, dusty roads through villages long beaten out of the semblance of human habitation by the shells. Gazing back down the column, the thought that always struck uppermost was the realization of strength. The infantry column moves slowly, but the latent power in the close mass of marching men is very impressive. The only thing I know which compares with it in suggestion of power is a line of great gray dreadnaughts lunging across the water.

At one village a young French soldier, who had been riding on a bicycle by our column, stopped sadly before three crumbling walls. It was all that was left of his home. His father, the mayor of the village, had lived there. His mother had died in Germany and he did not know what had become of his father.

By night we were out of the uninhabited parts and were reaching the freed French villages. Here we found starving men, women, and children whom we helped out from our none-too-plentiful rations. These people were pathetic. They seemed to have lost the power to rejoice. They looked at us from their doors with lackluster eyes and apparent indifference. One woman told me that the Germans as they left her house had told her they would be back soon. I asked her if she believed it, and she simply shrugged her shoulders.

Next morning we were on the march again. All day long, past our advancing columns, streamed the prisoners whom the Germans had been working in the coal mines. They were French, Italian, Russian, and Rumanian, desperately emaciated for the most part and still wearing their old uniforms. Sometimes they dragged behind them little carts containing the possessions of two or three of them. Often I stopped them and questioned them, but whether they were French or not they seemed to have one idea, and one only—to put as many miles between them and Germany as possible.

We had sent back to where our baggage was stored while we were at Verdun and brought up our colors and our band. Now we put them at the head of the column and went forward with; band playing and colors flying.

The farther we got from where the front line had been, the better was the condition of the inhabitants. Now we began to see the first signs of rejoicing. News would reach the authorities in villages that we were coming some time before we arrived. They would throw arches of flowers over the streets through which we marched. Groups of little girls would run by the side of the column, giving bouquets to the men. Cheering crowds would gather on the sides of the road.

The doughboy had a beautiful time. The doughboy loves marching to music, with flags flying and the populace cheering. He is very human and is fond of showing off. For some reason or other there is a current belief in this country that the average American does not like parades, decorations, etc. This is just bosh. The average American is just as keen for such things as anyone else. He likes to put on a pretty ribbon and come home and be admired by the young ladies. I know I like to put on my decorations for my wife.

In every little town where we spent the night a ceremony of some sort took place. Generally the townspeople made us an American flag and presented it to us. I have some of these flags stowed away at this moment. They were made with the help of old dictionaries. Sometimes these dictionaries were very old and the American flag of one hundred years ago would be the one copied. At one village we were presented with a flag with fifty stars. The donor explained that he had been in the United States and knew we had forty-eight and that the two extra were for Alsace and Lorraine.

Once, while we were at mess in the evening, with great ceremony it was announced that a committee of young ladies desired to wait on me. I bowed to the girdle and said, "Will they come in?" They trooped in, peasant girls from fourteen to twenty years old, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and headed by the mayor's daughter. They had a flag with them. First, one of them made an elaborate speech, in which we were hailed as the sons of Lafayette and George Washington, a slight historical inaccuracy. Then I replied, calling upon the names of Joan of Arc, Henry of Navarre, and others, and then the spokes lady, to the intense delight of my staff, stepped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. At another time a large, corpulent, much-bewhiskered mayor endeavored to enact the same ceremony, but forewarned is forearmed, and I evaded him.

In a short time we came to the Duchy of Luxembourg and marched over the border. Everywhere here also we were met with open arms. The streets were jammed as we marched through the villages. All the world and his wife were there and greeted us as "Comrades glorious" and "Victors."

We sent forward, as was customary, a detail of officers to make sure that billeting accommodations were forthcoming and that everything would be as comfortable as possible for the men. When I arrived, slightly in advance of the troops, the first thing I saw was a procession of town folk approaching. At its head was a band which might, for all the world, have come out of the comic opera. Following the band were pompous gentlemen in frock coats and top hats, carrying bouquets of gorgeous flowers done up with ribbons, and making up the body of the procession were people of every age, both sexes, and every grade in society. I realized they were heading for me, and with great dignity descended from the dinky little side car in which I had been traveling. Major Legge and Lieutenant Ridgely here joined me and explained that a ceremony of welcome was to take place, and I was to represent the United States! We three lined up solemnly while the Luxembourgers formed a semicircle around us. The ceremony was, first, the presentation speech; second, the keys of the city and armfuls of bouquets, and, third, a cheer for America; and then the band played. We none of us knew the Luxembourg national anthem, but felt that this must be it, so we stood at attention with great solemnity and saluted while it was sounding. When it was finished the mayor started it off again with a cheer for France and the same supposedly national anthem. Again we stood at attention. We went through this same ceremony for six of the Allies, when fortunately the troops came up and terminated it. Later I found that the tune they played and to which we had been rendering the formal compliment was the air of a popular song. The warm welcome would have impressed me more had I not been certain it had been accorded equally to the Germans when they marched through.

Meanwhile the Eighteenth Infantry of our division had passed on our left flank through the city of Luxembourg. That day I ran down with a couple of officers to watch them parade. It was the first time I had ever been in Luxembourg. The city is very picturesque. It is built on the side of a rocky gorge, and on one jutting pinnacle of rock are the remains of the feudal castle where a medieval emperor of Germany was born. The fete amused me very much. I felt as if I were living in George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark. The Luxembourg army was drawn up to receive our troops, all the men being present, 150 sum total. What they lacked in numbers they made up in gorgeousness. Never have I seen such beautiful uniforms, so many colors, so much gold lace, and such absurdly antiquated rifles. The populace had a beautiful time. They are mercantile by temperament. They realized that a reign of plenty was coming; that the American goose that lays the golden eggs would be in their midst and that money would flow as the changeless current of their own Moselle River.

A couple of days' march farther and we reached the banks of the Moselle. Here we spent four or five days while the troops cleaned up and rested in three small towns. The regimental band played for different units every day. Everything moved smoothly. The inhabitants were gentle and kindly. Indeed, they were so effective in their kindness that one of the second battalion headquarters cooks, called'' Chops,'' came to grief. First, he drank all of their wine he could get, then, in an inspired spirit of generosity, cooked and turned over to his new friends the turkey which, with much labor, had been secured for the officers' Thanksgiving dinner. His generosity was sadly misunderstood by his commanding officer, for he was returned to duty with the mule train from which he had come.

On the fifth of December we resumed the march and crossed the Moselle into conquered Germany. From this time on a new element was added to the chances of campaigning. Our maps were perfectly impossible. You never could tell where bridges were and where there were simply ferries. Once we ran our column directly into a pocket. The map showed what looked like a bridge. We were not allowed to scout ahead, and the interpreter's questions seemed to confirm its existence. When we got there we found a ferry that accommodated only sixteen men at a time and we had to double on our tracks. On these maps, also, the roads all looked good. The first day's march in Germany we nearly lost the supply train on account of this, as a seemingly good highway ended in a marsh.

That night we billeted for the first time in German territory. Regimental headquarters were in the country house of a German officer. On the news of our advance he had fled farther north, but, with the characteristic affectation of his class, telephoned, on our arrival, saying he regretted that he would not be there to receive us and hoped that we would be comfortable. Next morning he telephoned again, sending a message to the effect that if any of his servants had not done everything for our comfort would we please report the matter to him immediately in order that he might punish the offender.

All the next day we moved up the banks of the winding Moselle through Treves, where relics of the old Roman buildings frowned down on us as we passed. At night we stopped in another German house, from which the German officer had not fled. He was a lieutenant colonel and had waited to receive us, prepared to be butler or anything we demanded. 

A real indication of the character of the German soldier was given by the terror of the women at our approach. It was clear that they expected any outrage. On account of this, on arriving in each town, when I would call the burgomaster to give him the instructions concerning the behavior of the townspeople, I would finish up by directing him to announce to all women and children that they need have no fear concerning the actions of any American soldier, that we were Americans, not Germans. I had my interpreter see that it was given out in this form.

Day after day we followed the river or made short cuts inland. As we marched along, on hilltops on either side, silhouetted against the sky, austere and dignified, were the crumbling brown-rock towers of medieval castles. These castles were destroyed more than two centuries before by Louis XIV as he marched by the same route. On either side of the river the slopes rose abruptly. They were covered with vineyards, apparently growing from the brown shale. Once, when we passed through the city of Berncastle, in the early morning, when the mist choked the valley, I looked up and saw on the peak that overhung the town, touched by the morning sun, the old keep framed in the white mist like a cameo set in mother-of-pearl. Time and again some Hun farmer would stop me and take me through a cow-shed to see the marble remains of some Roman bath or villa, the name of whose owner had long since vanished in the mists of time.

An odd incident of this march occurred when Lieutenant Barrett was ordered by me to go and instruct a German soldier we were passing concerning certain of our regulations. When Barrett reported back, he told me the man had come from his own home town in Indiana.

One thing that struck us all as we left France and reached Germany was the number of children. In France children are rare. Each community you passed you felt was composed of grown people. In Germany the streets were full of them—healthy-looking little rascals, pink-cheeked and well-nourished, wearing diminutive gray-blue uniforms like those of the German soldier. Little machine gunners, the men used to call them, for they looked like so many small replicas of those men we had been killing and who had killed us. Immediately upon the proclamation going out that the children would be in no way molested, these little rascals swarmed over everything. Nothing could satisfy their curiosity.

After weaving our way up the river valley and over the hills, one early December morning we found ourselves winding down from the surrounding hills toward the Rhine. As we swung around a rocky corner, the whole panorama lay before us—the gables and steeples of the town of Boppard with, as a background, the broad, undisturbed silver Rhine. On we wound down the rocky slope into the city, the flag flying at the head of the column. That night I formed the entire regiment in line on the terraced water front facing the river and, with the band playing The Star-Spangled Banner, stood retreat.

We waited here a day and then marched down the river to Coblenz. On this march we passed through one village, with old gates, little jutting houses carved and painted in bright colors, unchanged sixteenth-century Europe. Next was another village, factory towers smoking, great brick buildings filled with machinery, plain little board houses for the workmen, the epitome of modernism.

The night of December 12th we billeted at Coblenz. Next morning, at seven o'clock, the First Division in two columns crossed the Rhine, the first of the American troops. As the head of the column reached the center of the bridge and I looked at massive Ehrenbreitstein and up and down the historic river, I felt this truly marked the end of an era.

Two days more brought us to the end of the bridgehead, where we were to take up our position. Division headquarters were in quite a large town called Montabaur, a name supposed to have been brought back with the early crusaders, i. e., Mount Tabor. Two castles overlooked the town, one in ruins, the other still used as an administrative building by the town authorities. The regiment was scattered through the surrounding small country villages.

Quarters for the men were good in comparison with what they had been used to. We were able to get washing facilities, food came up regularly, and now, for the first time, proper equipment. The men really enjoyed themselves for the first week or so. We had no trouble with fraternization. Our men had seen too many of their friends and relations killed to care to have anything to do with their late enemies. Like true Americans, they played with the children and flirted with the women whenever opportunity offered, but I never remember seeing any attempt to become familiar with the men.

Now that the work of fighting was over, uppermost in everyone's mind was the thought, "When do we get home?" The minuteman wanted to go back to ordinary life and his family. Time and again when I first returned to this country people would ask me what I thought the soldiers thought of this or that public question. I always replied truthfully that the men were so busy thinking about what a good place the United States was, how much better in their opinion than any of the European countries they had been to, that all they were interested in was, when will that transport leave.

In January I was ordered to Paris on sick leave. Shortly after, I sailed for home on the Mauretania and saw the mass of New York lift on the horizon, where my three children, who had practically forgotten me, were waiting. So ends the active participation of an average American with average Americans in the war.