Meeting the Enemy

by Richard van Emden

  The Hindenburg Line was significant as it was the German army’s last prepared defensive position. Once it was crossed, the war continued in more or less open countryside, with Germans engaged in a fighting retreat, destroying bridges and crossroads, flooding ground to halt the progress of tanks, booby-trapping houses and barns. Determined and brave German snipers and machine-gunners fought lone battles to slow the Allies’ pace of advance. And, when required, the German infantry could still put up a tenacious defence, but the Allies’ predominance in almost every aspect of arms was marked, and in artillery the Germans were hopelessly outgunned.

  Andrew Bowie, a lance corporal in the Cameron Highlanders, recalled one incident that brought home to him the tragic and, from the German perspective, futile nature of the last weeks of fighting.

  We took a young prisoner. The Germans had pulled back and had had to leave him. I was assisting the intelligence officer, and they brought this boy to the officer; he was only about sixteen and the area just above his hip had been shot away by shrapnel. It was a bad wound, and bleeding a lot at the back. This poor child could speak a little English and said his mother had told him that at the first opportunity he was to give himself up to the English, they would look after him. He was a nice-looking boy, a healthy-looking lad with a big face. The fellows came in to have a look at him, about a dozen of us, and they were giving him chocolate. He could eat a little. They felt he was their own brother, there was an atmosphere of love, he wasn’t the enemy then.

  The Allies continued to press the Germans psychologically as well as physically. Allied aircraft leafleted the retiring Germans, drawing their attention to the number of their comrades taken prisoner in recent fighting, at 100,000 an accurate enough figure. The leaflets also highlighted monthly reinforcements of 300,000 ‘fresh American troops’. Any German reading these leaflets could not scoff at such claims as in his heart he knew they were true.

  The Germans leafleted in reply. Gone were bellicose claims, or taunts. If any Allied soldier needed proof that the Germans were on their knees, this was it.

  We are of the firm conviction that all belligerents owe to mankind to examine in common whether it is not possible to put an end to this frightful struggle now, after so many years of costly but undecided fighting whose whole course points towards an understanding. The Imperial and Royal Government therefore propose to the Government of all the belligerent states to send delegates in the near future to a place of a neutral country . . . with a view to a confidential and most binding conference on the main principles of a treaty of peace.

  The outcome was not in doubt: when and where the war would end, in France or on German soil, in 1918 or in 1919, were the only subjects under speculation. In early October, reports reached Sapper Jack Martin that the Germans were asking for an armistice and he passed these on to the men of his unit; some of them laughed in derision, accusing Martin of being over-optimistic.

  I doubt if anything tangible will result from the request (even if it be true). I look on it more as a sign of the beginning of the end, but how long it will be before the end of the end arrives it is impossible to say. I only hope that Germany will realize her doom is sealed and accept the fact very quickly. The march today was twenty miles.

  Twenty miles: this was not an advance of twenty miles, but, regardless of the winding route the men had been forced to take that day, it still gave some indication of the pressure German forces were under and evidence of the ground they were being forced to concede.

  The Allied troops, out of the relative safety of trenches and exposed in the open, suffered dreadful casualties as a rolling offensive snapped at the heels of the German army. The decision to allow the enemy no respite was eminently sensible when their morale was at an all-time low and Allied morale correspondingly high, but inevitably there were incidents where a well-sited German machine gun on a crossroads or on the edge of a small copse caused brief, if localised, havoc.

  Nevertheless, as enemy prisoners were marshalled, British soldiers saw how many Germans were marked out by their age: either very old or very young. Too many were intent on saving their lives, giving up without a fight and appearing docile, willing to allow those who were ready to fight to stand their ground.

  In the last days of fighting, Corporal Fred Hodges was ordered to take a batch of prisoners back to a POW cage. The men were waiting at a farm as Hodges arrived.

  As I led this untidy looking double line of prisoners out through the gateway, I could hear the Regimental Sergeant Major’s rasping voice counting them out, ‘Two-four-six-eight-ten—’. When I was about fifty yards from the farm, I stepped to one side, motioned them to keep going, and looked back to see what I had got. I estimated that I had about forty prisoners, and at the rear, one Lancashire Fusilier. Seeing, about sixty yards away, another Fusilier driving another half a dozen Germans before him, I shouted across to him to join us. A few minutes later we were also joined by another small group, which to my great surprise included a German officer.

  With the aid of this English-speaker, Hodges turned the straggling group into a column of men marching in fours. The walk was a considerable distance and had to pass through an area saturated with German gas. It was soon evident that enemy gas masks were of a quality much inferior to the Allied ones, and the Germans coughed and spat their way through the affected area.

  Several high-explosive shells burst uncomfortably close until the column reached the POW cage, where they met yet more troops going up to the front.

  As these fresh troops passed us on the road, they shouted insults at the Germans, and one of them, seeing the German officer at my side, shouted as he passed, ‘Make that bloody bastard Boche carry your pack!’ I made no reply, and reflected that the nearer one is to the battle, the less hate there is. Some of these boy soldiers going up to the front had probably not been in action. I felt a certain strange kinship with my prisoners.

  When Hodges finally handed the men over, he was surprised to be given a receipt.

  The receipt was for one German officer and fifty-eight other ranks. I noticed that they detached the German officer from the rest, led him off into a building and expertly sorted the other ranks by regiment, penning them like sheep. They were only too ready to lie down on the straw in the cattle pens. For them the war was over.

  Privately, the German High Command conceded defeat on 29 September, the day the Allies broke through the Hindenburg Line and a day after the capitulation of Bulgaria, a Central Powers ally of Germany. On 3 October, the High Command handed back executive power to the Reichstag so that politicians rather than the army would be responsible for negotiating peace. Politicians accepted the offer in order to try to re-establish control over collapsing civil order, and to diminish the growing threat from Bolshevik-inspired radicals. A new chancellor was appointed, the moderate Prince Max von Baden, who would oversee the conclusion of peace with the Allies. He would quickly discover that he had been placed in an almost impossible situation, with socialists demanding the abdication of the Kaiser on one hand, and the political right steadfastly refusing to accept such a move on the other. A few days later, Germany signalled to the United States that she was willing to take part in a negotiated peace agreement. The message, decoded by the French, served only to reassure the Allies that Germany was finished and therefore that negotiation was not an option. It was almost certainly this rumour that Sapper Martin had heard.

  On 28 October, an attempt by senior naval officers to launch the German High Seas Fleet in a suicidal attack on the Royal Navy was resisted by naval ratings who mutinied. These men linked up with disgruntled and radicalised industrial workers to quickly establish councils to demand immediate peace and political reform. The revolt rapidly spread from the naval port of Kiel across northern Germany. On 7 November, the 45,000-strong garrison in Cologne rose up and formed a revolutionary council while across the country workers’ and soldiers’ councils were formed along the structural lines of Russian Soviets. Two days later,
Prince Max von Baden resigned and a socialist, Friedrich Ebert, was handed the reigns of power, and announced that Germany was a republic. Within hours the Kaiser bowed to the inevitable and abdicated both as German Emperor and King of Prussia.

  In her journal, Princess Evelyn Blücher vividly described her own feelings in contrast to those of the Germans round about her. The war, on which so much had been gambled, was lost, and the fate of the Kaiser had become little more than an opportunity for a brief moment of relief.

  I must confess that I myself feel shocked and surprised at the universal rejoicing manifested at the abdication of the Kaiser. They could not be more jubilant if they had won the war! He may deserve his fate, but it seems very hard and cruel to throw stones at him at such a moment, when he must be enduring untold anguish and sorrow.

  I never felt so deeply for the German people as I do now, when I see them bravely and persistently trying to redress the wrongs of the war, for which they were in truth never responsible. The greater part of them were men fighting blindly to guard an ideal, the ‘Heimat’, some patch of mother earth . . . they were told was in danger, and this they went to save.

  Amongst the aristocracy, the grief at the breakdown of their country, more than at the personal fall of the Kaiser, is quite heart-rending to see. I have seen some of our friends, strong men, sit down and sob at the news, while others seemed to shrink to half their size and were struck dumb with pain . . .

  On that day, 9 November, the verger at St George’s Church in Berlin spotted a visitor entering the Monbijou Gardens. It was none other than Kaiser Wilhelm, accompanied by an adjutant carrying a bag. They passed the chapel and entered the neighbouring museum where Hohenzollern treasures were on public display, among them a scarlet gown worn by the Kaiser in 1907 when Oxford University conferred on him an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law. He remained at the museum for half an hour before he left: ‘No doubt with the objects that His Majesty did not wish to leave behind, safely tucked away in the bag,’ wrote Reverend Williams. ‘Then, as the verger looked on, Kaiser Wilhelm stopped and looked in sadness at his mother’s church for a minute or two, before leaving the garden.’ Although neither the verger nor Williams had any inkling, the Kaiser, a man once so full of self-importance and grandeur, was preparing meekly to slip over the border into exile in Holland. He would never return to Germany.

  The next day, Sunday 10 November, Kaiser Wilhelm crossed into Holland. That morning in Berlin, the Reverend Williams was making his way to church to take the first service of the day. There were reports of sporadic fighting in the capital between revolutionaries and the army, but Williams had as yet seen nothing. As he passed through the Monbijou Gardens, there was a sudden exchange of machine-gun and rifle fire between soldiers in the Guards’ barracks on one side of the River Spree and officers firing from rooftops on the other.

  ‘Bullets crackled through the bushes close beside me. It was all over in a minute or two, but might re-commence at any moment.’ Aware that parishioners for the eleven o’clock service might well walk into the line of fire, Williams positioned himself in front of the large open gates at the entrance to the garden, directing people to go round another way.

  I must have looked so unclerical in my grey flannels that a revolutionary sentinel, a young soldier I had noticed with his belt full of hand-grenades, evidently mistook me for a German officer in disguise and immediately reported what he had seen [to fellow revolutionaries].

  I had returned to the vestry to robe for the service when the verger appeared, looking frightened. ‘They’ve come!’ he gasped. At the same moment I heard a tramp, tramp, tramp in the church and a sharp word of command. The next moment a revolutionary officer appeared in the doorway. With him were half-a-dozen soldiers with fixed bayonets and a machine gun. They had come to arrest me and had been informed that a number of anti-revolutionary officers were in hiding in the church. I assured the officer that he was mistaken - I was the British chaplain and no German, and could give my word of honour that there were no officers hiding in the church. If he would be good enough to search it, I was at his service.

  We went round together and looked in every corner. He then said quite courteously, ‘I accept your word for it, Herr Kaplan, that we have made a mistake and beg you to accept our apologies, but should there be any deception, you will of course be held responsible. I shall leave two of my men on guard here and withdraw the rest. I bid you good-day,’ clicked his heels and saluted. I smiled and held out my hand. He smiled too, grasped it warmly, saluted again and turned on his heel. A nice fellow.

  Half-an-hour later we were half-way through the service when, just as we were singing the hymn ‘Peace, perfect peace’, there was a sudden outburst of artillery and machine gun fire from the barracks outside. It did not disturb us but seemed a curious accompaniment to the words we were singing.

  The next day, 11 November, the Armistice came into force.

  During the last months of the war, thousands of British prisoners were kept working behind the lines in France and Belgium. Moved from place to place, they were dependent on food the Germans scraped together that was never enough to sustain them for any length of time. These men rarely, if ever, received Red Cross parcels and as the Germans retired that autumn they were forcibly marched from pillar to post, exhausted and weak.

  With news of the Armistice, the Germans abandoned their captives. Private George Gadsby of the 1/18th London Regiment was with a batch of prisoners near Namur. The Germans initially wanted these men to continue with them to Cologne, but the prisoners refused and eventually the Germans marched off, leaving George and his mates to ‘enjoy the pleasure of watching the defeated German Army retire’.

  The wounded were thrown on the top of heavily laden wagons: men were cursing, and all the German soldiers wore strands of red ribbon proclaiming revolution against the Kaiser. Some of them, as they came out of the estaminets drunk, were singing the ‘Marseillaise’. The Germans raided several stores and barges, most of them containing wine and spirits.

  Another prisoner who had been captured during the March offensive was Private Walter Humphreys of the 1/15th London Regiment. He was in a poor state, trudging ahead of the retiring Germans. Along with dozens of other prisoners, Humphreys had spent weeks sleeping by the side of the road or on the floors of empty buildings. They were all desperately hungry, too, but still the enemy kept them captive until one afternoon a German officer walked into the farmyard where they were resting and spoke to the men.

  ‘As the Armistice has been signed, you can do as you like as we have no food for you. You are free. We are going back to Germany.’ And he walked out and left us there. Everybody scrabbled out to make sure they were free. Where the men intended to go when it was nearly dark, I don’t know.

  In Germany, news of the Armistice was usually given to prisoners by the camp commandant. After months of poor treatment and frequent abuse, the prisoners were amused at the craven way commandants who had hitherto referred to prisoners as ‘Schweinehunde’ now addressed them respectfully, as Private Jack Rogers witnessed.

  The commandant spoke to his interpreter and the first word this little man said was ‘Gentlemen’. You can just imagine the roar that went up when he said that, cheering, shouting, he couldn’t keep us quiet.

  At Munster railway station, there had accumulated hundreds of small Red Cross parcels that were supposed to have been delivered to prisoners. They were no good to us but we were still extremely cross and did not want German soldiers to have them. So we had a chat amongst ourselves and said that if the authorities could arrange for all the poor people in the village to come to the station, we prisoners would be there to hand them each a parcel. We knew they’d had very little food and a rough time, so wouldn’t it be a grand gesture before we went? The next day there were queues of people all lined up, waiting, and we all had the privilege of giving a parcel and you ought to have seen them, the looks on their faces.

  The best policy for prisoners wea
kened by poor treatment was to stay where they were until Allied troops could arrange their safe extraction. This did not mean that prisoners remained confined behind barbed wire and, where there were nearby towns and villages, they took the opportunity to look around them. They found a crestfallen population whose citizens would step from the pavement to walk in the gutter, allowing prisoners the right of way.

  For prisoners fortunate enough to have worked on the land, news that they were free depended entirely on fellow farmhands. Alf Bastin, captured in October 1914 with the Royal Naval Division, had been made an assistant gardener on a big estate north of Berlin. When a local man brought a newspaper with the headlines announcing that the war was over, Alf immediately packed up work. ‘We had a conversation. He said, “Terrible isn’t it? For years and years we’ve been singing Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” Germany, Germany above all, “and I’ll have to change that now to Deutschland, Deutschland alles über”, Germany, Germany, all is over.’

  The signs of revolution were everywhere. Prisoners in France and Germany witnessed guards ripping off army insignia, removing shoulder straps and tying red ribbons to their tunics. At Namur, George Gadsby saw German soldiers threatening to throw their sergeant into the canal; officers who tried to maintain discipline were attacked. At Minden camp, the commandant, a symbol of the old regime and a man who had made it his business to swagger, now became congenial and asked politely if the prisoners had any red handkerchiefs. He intended to make a flag that could be flown over the military section of the camp, although ultimately this flag did not save him from being badly beaten up by revolutionaries. At Birkenmoor camp, a satellite of Gustrow camp, the guards returned singing from a meeting with red flags tied to their bayonets. Prisoners were shocked to see the commandant thrown into prison, sergeants and corporals stripped of rank and rifles, and a private named Hoffmann seizing authority. Civilians, caught up in the revolutionary spirit, tore down the barbed wire surrounding the camp. ‘We are free to go wherever we like, and of course we do not miss the chance,’ wrote an anonymous prisoner at the camp.