Berlin Correspondents
Berlin felt much like London, the streets crowded with automobiles, the pavements and cafés with men in uniform. The main difference was that German soldiers seemed incapable of marching in silence—they were always bellowing out a song, even at six in the morning.
As Caitlin ate breakfast the following day, a smiling young American approached her table and introduced himself as “Jack Slaney, a third—now a quarter—of our great American press in Berlin. The other half is over there,” he added, pointing out two middle-aged men in suits who were sharing a table on the far side of the room.
Over coffee he answered her practical questions.
Was there any scrutiny of outgoing copy, and if so, was it censored?
Yes and not yet, he told her, the latter because neither he nor his colleagues had pushed any criticisms to an unacceptable level, and the Germans were still intent on bending over backward to keep them and their country sweet.
Was there more than one way of dispatching copy if extra speed or discretion were required?
Yes to speed, but it was expensive; no to any hope of secrecy, unless she planned on setting up her own wireless station.
“Do they supply interpreters? I suppose you speak German.” Her own lack of languages had worried Caitlin since she’d first left the States several years ago, but so far her only attempts at remedying the situation had been a few halfhearted hours with a French grammar during Colm’s time in Brixton.
“I just about get along,” Slaney told her, running a hand through his thick brown hair. “But yes, they’ll give you an interpreter. When you see Gerhard Singer at the foreign ministry, he’ll assign one to you. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that he’s only an interpreter. He’ll also be reporting back on everything you say and do.”
“Ah.”
“Oh, they’ll make an effort to start with, make sure you see their better side. As far as we’re concerned, they’re desperate for good publicity, and if you write what they want you to write, you’ll be the toast of Berlin. That said, they have no illusions that we’ll ever join the war on their side, so they’ll settle for what they consider an evenhanded approach, because that encourages American neutrality.”
“What about our colleagues over there?” she asked, tipping her head toward the two older Americans.
Slaney rolled his eyes. “They’re only interested in generals—Berlin’s like heaven to them. They were so pro-German in the first few months of the war that their own editors took them to task. Now they just stick to reporting the battles.”
“And you?” Caitlin asked him sweetly.
He grinned. “Oh, I’m a pragmatist. Truth if you can, a pregnant silence if you can’t. And I give the Germans their due. They’re not the fiends the English say they are, but they’re not exactly victims either. The things they did in Belgium were pretty bad, but then think how the Belgians behaved in the Congo.”
Caitlin smiled. “Well, I’m Irish, so I’ve no great love for the English.”
“You should be sure to tell the Germans that,” Slaney said, waving his empty cup at a passing waiter. “They’ll cut you more slack.”
“Mmm.” She looked around the crowded room. Her first regrettable task after spending one exceedingly comfortable night upstairs was to find cheaper long-term accommodation. “Are you staying here?” she asked Slaney.
“God, no. I do a lot of my business in the bar—it’s a good place to meet people, and it’s convenient for most of the government offices—but it’s way beyond my paper’s means. I’ve got a room on Uhlandstrasse, close to the Ku’damm, on the other side of the park.”
“How did you find them? How can I find one?”
“It’s easy. Depressingly so—every dead soldier frees up a bed. I think there’s one going free in my building. I’ll ask the Portierfrau if you like.”
That afternoon she had her first meeting with the government official responsible for liaisons with the foreign press. Gerhard Singer was about forty, with hair graying at the temples and a vaguely harassed expression—in his smart gray suit he could have passed for a Wall Street broker. His spacious second-floor office in one of the larger stone buildings on Wilhelmstrasse boasted a deep red Oriental carpet and vast expanses of highly polished wood.
Singer spoke near-perfect English and, as Slaney had intimated, seemed relieved that she spoke no German. An interpreter would be provided for officially arranged visits and for any she chose to arrange herself. A trip to see a prisoner-of-war camp had been scheduled for the very next day, and Singer was sure that she, like the other neutral correspondents, would be eager to see how enemy prisoners were being treated.
She would indeed, Caitlin said. She would also like to talk to as wide a cross section of German women as she could—particularly those who she presumed were now working in jobs previously done by men and those with husbands or sons at the front. She was eager to get a picture of how the nation as a whole was responding to the challenges of war.
Singer thought this a very worthwhile project. Misunderstandings arising out of ignorance could benefit neither country. “I have relations in the United States,” he added. “In Des Moines, Iowa. Do you know it?”
“I’m afraid not,” she told him, fighting off a vague memory that the train carrying her and McColl to Chicago had passed through the city.
“Well, America is big and has many people of German descent. We in the fatherland have a great affection for your country, and it pains us when disputes arise. The business of selling ammunition to Russia, for example—it has disappointed many Germans.”
“I’m sure it has,” Caitlin agreed diplomatically. It was the first she’d heard of it, which didn’t say much for her preparatory research.
“We understand that the United States has close ties with the other English-speaking countries—all we ask is that Americans view this war dispassionately, objectively, that they don’t mistake English propaganda for the truth.”
“I’m an Irish-American,” she told him. “I grew up distrusting English propaganda.” His smile was almost ecstatic, so she decided to push her luck. “And of course I would like to visit the fighting front,” she added matter-of-factly.
The smile vanished. “I doubt that would be possible for . . .” His voice dried up.
“A woman,” she suggested.
“Well, yes. It is a dangerous place.”
“There are female nurses working at the front, are there not?”
“Some way behind the front, yes. But . . . I doubt that my superiors would be prepared to sanction such a visit. Imagine you were wounded or killed by a stray bullet or shell?”
“I wouldn’t like that, of course. But neither would a male reporter.”
“Yes, but . . . it’s not the same, is it?”
“It should be.”
“Of course, my dear. But the world we live in . . . Imagine the headlines!”
She could see his point but was disinclined to admit it. “It’s hard to write about a war you haven’t witnessed.”
“I can see that. But . . . Leave it with me,” he said abruptly.
“Of course.”
“Singer’s a smooth bastard,” Slaney acknowledged the next morning as the two of them waited for a tram on the Ku’damm.
“Isn’t he, though?” Caitlin agreed. She had taken the room above Slaney’s in the house on Uhlandstrasse, and the two of them had just had breakfast together, sitting outside a sidewalk café. The large second-floor room had proved cheap and perfectly adequate, with a window overlooking the street and a distant view of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The bed was harder than she liked but would probably do her good. There was a small table for the typewriter she had hired the previous afternoon from an office shop on the Ku’damm.
They were on their way to the Hotel Adlon, where Singe
r or one of his minions would be collecting the entire neutral press corps for the promised visit to the camp. It was another fine August day, the temperature in the seventies, and Caitlin was already regretting her agreement to Singer’s request that she wear “modest clothes.” He was clearly worried that a hint of bare female flesh might provoke a riot among the sex-starved prisoners.
The other correspondents—the two Americans, a Swede, a Spaniard, and an Argentinean—were already gathered on the pavement outside the Adlon, and while they all waited for the promised transport, her fellow countrymen introduced themselves with a mixture of courtesy and condescension that left her wanting to punch them both in the nose. They also announced that they were leaving next day for the East Prussian front and a possible audience with the mighty Hindenburg.
“Don’t worry,” Slaney muttered. “If they do get to meet the great man, they’ll ask him all the wrong questions.”
Singer arrived with two automobiles, and the eight of them crammed themselves in with the drivers. The camp was just outside the city and clearly a work in progress. Rows of newly built wooden sheds stretched away to a distant line of trees; Caitlin counted thirty-three, and more were under construction. The one they entered was crowded but clean, and the prisoners—English, French, and Russian—seemed healthy enough under the circumstances. Allowed to sample one section’s upcoming lunch, a beef-and-cabbage stew simmering in three giant cauldrons, the journalists had their expectations confounded. It didn’t taste at all bad and certainly seemed nutritious.
Caitlin was pleasantly surprised, Slaney less so. “They wouldn’t be bringing us out here if the prisoners were going to drop dead at our feet,” he said flatly as they strolled down the hard-packed path between the sheds.
They passed a group of French prisoners, all of whom stared at her. More wistfully than lecherously, she thought. Perhaps they were thinking it might be years before they made love to a woman again.
She turned back to Slaney. “But have you any evidence that other camps are worse?”
“No,” he admitted.
“They are good at organizing things,” she thought out loud. “They’re so thorough.”
“Tell that to the Belgians.”
She gave him a look. “That’s a low blow, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. But think about it—when things go wrong for organized people, they tend to take it as a personal slight and react more violently than someone with lower expectations.”
“Perhaps,” she conceded as they strolled back toward the entrance gates. “And speaking of thorough, yesterday I had the distinct feeling I was being followed.”
“You probably were, but I shouldn’t take it personally. I think they follow everyone at some point or other. Most of the time, they accept that we’re who we say we are, but every now and then some bright spark in an office decides that one of us might be a spy and needs investigating. So they follow him—or in your case her—for a few hours or days, get reassured, and turn their attention to someone else. It’s part of the game. Annoying but harmless.”
And good to know, she thought. She would be well advised to “reassure” them before she tried to contact any of Kollontai’s socialist friends. Give it a week at least. But there seemed no harm in talking to those socialists now supporting the war or in seeking out Colm’s instructor.
Back at the Adlon, she took Singer aside. “My younger brother believed in a free Ireland,” she began. “A year ago he was part of a sabotage operation in England that ended in failure. He was caught and executed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Singer responded automatically. He was clearly surprised.
“Thank you. But the reason I’m telling you this is that he and his comrades were trained by a German major. Not a mercenary, an agent of your government. I have no wish to write about this,” she hastened to add, “but I was very close to my brother, and if it is at all possible, I would like to meet this man. My brother admired him greatly, and talking to someone Colm worked with during his final months would mean a lot to me.”
“What was the major’s name?”
“Manfred Suhr.”
“I will make inquiries,” Singer promised. He had the air of someone who had just received a rather nice present.
She thanked him profusely and thought she might as well keep up the pressure. “I was hoping there’d be news of my trip to the front.”
He shook his head. “No, no. Nothing as yet.”
The following morning Caitlin visited the redbrick building on Dorotheenstrasse, just around the corner from the Adlon, which housed the War Academy. Slaney had suggested she might find it interesting, and she soon realized why. There were no students these days—the academy had been turned into an inquiry center for those whose relatives had gone to war. In the main hall, a circle of desks was manned by those too old to go; they took down the names and sent younger men from the local garrison scurrying off to consult the files within. It was, unsurprisingly, a place of polarized emotions, from the barely containable elation of those who received good news to the heartrending grief of those whose world had just collapsed.
Caitlin stayed only a few minutes, the journalist in her glad she had come, the woman feeling like a voyeur.
She was only a few feet from the Adlon entrance when a man intercepted her. He had his back to the sun, and for a moment she didn’t recognize him, but when he spoke, she knew who it was.
She had met Rainer von Schön on the Manchuria, the liner that had carried her and Jack McColl from Shanghai to San Francisco in February 1914. The German, a water engineer, had boarded the ship in Tokyo, but Jack had met him earlier in China. And despite spending most of the voyage in her cabin with Jack, she had gotten to know the German quite well. A decent man, who missed his wife and children, was proud of his country and its achievements, and yet regretted the growing militarism that the Kaiser and his generals seemed determined to promote.
Seeing him there, remembering those weeks, a flood of memories rose up inside her.
He was just as surprised to see her, but clearly pleased. He insisted on taking her for coffee and cake—“Berlin has the best in the world.” As they walked down Unter den Linden, he plied her with questions. How long had she been in Berlin? Was she here as a journalist? Was she here on her own?
“If you’re asking if I’m here with Jack McColl, the answer is no,” she told him. “We parted company more than a year ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You seemed . . . Sorry, I . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. But I’d rather not talk about him.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“How are your wife and children?”
“Oh, fine. Fine. They’re in the country. With my wife’s parents in Saxony. Berlin’s no place for them at the moment.”
“It seems remarkably normal to me.”
They reached the junction with Friedrichstrasse, where von Schön decided that the Café Kranzler was too crowded and took her across to the facing Café Bauer. As he ordered for them both, she studied the vast room and its clientele. Both were getting on, but the former at least was still full of splendors, from the huge mural depicting Roman life to the largest newspaper display cases she had ever seen.
Von Schön saw what she was looking at. “Before the war they used to import eight hundred newspapers from all over Europe,” he told her with obvious pride.
“Impressive,” she murmured.
“And what about your family?” he asked, echoing her concern for his. “They lived in New York, I believe.”
“I think they’re all right. I haven’t been back for a long time.” She paused. “I lost my younger brother,” she said. “He got involved in Irish politics, went to the home country, and fell in with a group of . . . well, I guess you’d call them revolutionaries. They contacted your government, which sent explos
ives and someone to instruct them in their use. Just after war broke out, they tried to blow up some railway bridges in England, and Colm was caught. He was shot in March,” she added, and felt surprised by how calmly she could say it.
Von Schön looked shocked. “But that’s terrible. For him and you, for your whole family. And you say my government was involved?”
“Oh, yes. One of your officials is trying to track down the instructor for me.” She told him what she had told Singer.
“Well, I know some people in that line of work—it was impossible to avoid them working outside Germany. I shall also make inquiries.”
“Thank you.”
The coffees arrived, along with two pastries bursting with cream, and conversation ceased for the next few minutes.
“I assume you were not involved in any way yourself?” von Schön said after using a napkin to clear the cream from his mustache.
“I knew nothing of their plans until it was too late.”
“You must feel very bitter toward the English. Was that why you and Jack—I am sorry, you said you didn’t . . .”
“That was part of it. But it’s all over now.” And no, she thought, she didn’t feel any animosity toward the English people. How could she with a friend like Sylvia?
He smiled. “I am sorry. For you and for Ireland.”
“Yes, well. Are you still working as a water engineer?”
“In a way. I can’t really tell you, I’m afraid.” He smiled. “Military secrets, you know. Let’s just say that soldiers like to drink and wash.”
“You must have been to the front.”
“Several times.”
“And how do you think the war is going? For Germany.”
He shrugged. “We are fighting on enemy soil, which has to be better than fighting on our own.”
“You see no possibility of a quick end to it all?”
“No. But then what do I know?”
One Man's Flag Page 12
