Meeting the Enemy (33 page)

Only in August did the Germans agree to send full particulars of Genower’s death, on receipt of which, in early September, the British government furnished the Germans with details of Ultsch’s death.

The German explanation of Genower’s death was reasonably detailed. He had been held in secure detention awaiting trial after assaulting a guard. A fire had broken out near the punishment cells and spread so rapidly that, despite the best efforts of the sentry on guard who ‘at once gave energetic assistance to the work of rescue’, the prisoner could not be saved. Rumours that Genower had been bayoneted as he tried to escape from a window were a ‘malicious fabrication’.

The British response was direct. A Foreign Office official appended a note to the German reply: ‘I do not believe the Germans’ story for a moment – the story which we pieced together is too well founded not to be substantially correct.’ As far as the British government was concerned, Genower had been murdered. The case became high-profile enough for a Government White Paper to be published on Genower’s death, and questions about the incident were asked in the House of Commons and reported in the press. Once again, the government promised to keep a record of known atrocities for post-war prosecution.

Diplomatic traffic concerning the death of John Genower had passed through the good offices of the American Embassy in Berlin, much as it had done for the previous three years. The United States had always pursued a policy of non-intervention in the war, although the German sinking of RMS
Lusitania
in 1915 had sorely tested their resolve. After the disaster, the USA had demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships, and Germany acquiesced. However, in February 1917, it resumed a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in an attempt to blockade and starve Britain into submission. Submarines soon attacked and sank several US merchant ships bringing food and materials across the Atlantic. Knowing that America was likely to enter the war on the side of the Allies, the Germans attempted to bring Mexico into the war on their side by promising support for the long-held Mexican dream of recovering the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The disclosure of this plot, proposed in the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, proved to be the final straw. America declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.

8

The Crying Game

Enemy alien or prisoner of war: neither was likely to be comfortable when living under the legal ‘protection’ of an adversary. International law entitled prisoners of war to food, clothing and accommodation, but there was no such guarantee for enemy aliens. At the outbreak of war, British and German governments had given paid support to their own nationals living under the other’s jurisdiction. This meant, of course, that the British taxpayer supported the Bavarian
Hausfrau
married to an Englishman and living in Munich and the German taxpayer looked after the Peckham-born-and-bred wife of a Saxon resident in London. Relatively higher German immigration to Britain made this a bad financial arrangement for Berlin and almost inevitably Germany reneged on the arrangement. Financial assistance would be given to German-born nationals in Britain and not those naturalised through marriage; in retaliation, the British followed suit. By their actions, both countries abandoned families to the grudging welfare of the enemy state or, more often, private charitable foundations. Then, as the years passed and the German economy faltered, Berlin looked for further ways to cut expenditure. In 1917 it withdrew all payments to nationals whose sons were conscripted into the British Army, and then stopped all support to German families who had lived in Britain for over ten years, halving their commitment to 687 German families, including 1,240 children.

The work of charitable organisations protecting the welfare of enemy aliens proved vital. The paltry sums awarded by both British and German governments could not sustain a family and even if an application for aid was entertained, it took many weeks to process. There were a number of charities concerned with the distress of all immigrants in Britain. The Central Council of United Alien Relief Societies had brought under one umbrella representatives of a number of relief organisations concerned with aliens’ welfare, although inevitably much of its work was with enemy aliens. Another was the Quakers’ Friends Emergency Committee (FEC).

The FEC was staffed by a group of people for whom nationality and national boundaries were of little or no importance. In the teeth of wide public resentment, this relatively small number of British citizens worked tirelessly to support and provide welfare for enemy aliens caught up in the conflict. From a haphazard start in 1914, by 1916 the Friends Emergency Committee had become well organised, with various departments and sub-committees actively working. The activities of the FEC included offering food parcels to British-born women and children who elected to follow their repatriated husbands to Germany, and giving support to internees stuck with all the strains and stresses of interminable captivity.

The tightening of German welfare payments helped channel a further 331 destitute families on to the books of the London FEC, in addition to the 6,200 families that had already come to the Committee’s attention in the capital. Outside London, FEC offices in towns and cities such as Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Bristol dealt with many more equally deserving cases. Fortunately, families who were helped through difficult periods with clothing, accommodation and food often became self-supporting once children became old enough to earn money, simultaneously freeing up mothers to search for work.

The FEC’s task went well beyond providing the essentials, as Anna Thomas, a Quaker serving on the Executive Committee wrote in the FEC’s Fourth Annual Report in 1916. In helping internees a veritable raft of ancillary duties was undertaken, covering ‘every kind of domestic and business difficulty’.

Would we find out why the wife was not writing; whether she was seriously ill or not; could we help in the discipline of an unruly boy, or with the education of a brilliant one; more common than all, could we not help with food or clothing or work to prevent starvation or illness which inevitably descended on those homes where the slender Government grant was the only income; could we find missing luggage, will or papers; could we pay off landladies, collect debts, redeem pawned goods, trace relatives, send children to Germany, patent inventions, pay wife’s fare to camp, arrange a wedding or a funeral, with many other suggestions. And usually, to end with, there was a pathetic belief (no place like an internment camp for false beliefs or rumours) that we had only to interview the Home Secretary in order to get the man released or the whole internment system abolished.

Because the FEC focused on helping enemy aliens, the organisation retained a high public profile, certainly in comparison with other charities. For that reason it was never free from press ridicule. The
Daily Express
ran a headline, ‘Aid for the Enemy Only’ and the
Evening News
called the FEC ‘Hun Coddlers’. But although a threat was made to shoot the FEC’s Secretary ‘at sight’, there appear to have been few, if any, physical attacks on Committee members.

In fairness, one of the biggest ‘Hun Coddlers’ was the British Army itself. Within its ranks it fed, clothed and accommodated thousands of sons born to German parents, and paid them. The soldiers’ Anglo-German ancestry had proved an irritant to the authorities, unsure of what to do with men whose loyalty was in question. Now, eight months after being bundled together into the Middlesex Regiment, these sons of enemy alien parentage were trained and ready for active service.

The idea of sending them overseas did not thrill all MPs, although not necessarily for the same reasons. One who raised the issue was the nonconformist Liberal MP for North Somerset, Joseph King. As a young man, he had studied theology at the University of Giessen in Germany. Unlike most MPs, he appeared to have sympathy for the plight (as he saw it) of Anglo-German soldiers in the Middlesex Regiment. On 21 March 1917, he complained to the House that a pledge made by Lord Kitchener not to send such men overseas was being broken. Replying, the Under Secretary of State for War pointed out that the units had not been raised until after Kitchener’s death. King rose again. These battalions, he said, were composed ‘. . . very largely of men who think in German more than in English, and I am told that their conversation is largely carried on in German. They all have German names, they sing together German songs, and though I believe they are loyal subjects of the King and of our cause, undoubtedly they have strong German associations.’

If these men were entirely loyal, then why would they act in such a way as to appear anything but British and loyal? And why should they not serve their country overseas? Surviving records indicate that between 15 and 20 per cent had British surnames, such as Davenport, Greenwood and Williams, and there is no evidence that anything King suggested was much more than rumour or gossip. King argued that these men were considered German by the Germans and would, on capture, be shot after court martial, but his arguments were unfounded and scatter-gun in their approach. It hardly mattered anyway; these men were going to the Western Front.

Eight Infantry Labour Companies (ILCs) were created from men of the 30th and 31st Middlesex Regiment. In late February and early March, six companies were informed of their imminent departure for France, causing mixed emotions among recruits about to take an active part in the war against Germany, not least those whose German fathers were languishing in internment. The decision by two unnamed men serving with 1st ILC to desert on the eve of the company’s departure from Reading for France suggests that not all were enthusiastic. Surviving evidence is patchy, but the action of these two does appear to be exceptional, and, while it would be surprising if every man’s allegiance to King and Country was unwavering, the vast majority would show admirable loyalty.

Unlike men of the army’s Labour Corps, which was made up predominantly of soldiers unfit for front-line service, the ILCs consisted of individuals in generally good physical health. Their commanding officers were of unquestionably British stock but, by contrast to those under their command, of a lower medical grade. Of the officers belonging to 3rd ILC, the Commanding Officer, Major William Renwick, had been severely shell-shocked and deafened by the explosion of a heavy gas shell in March 1916, and invalided home. A medical board considered him permanently disabled and unfit for overseas service, although that had not prevented his return. A second officer in the 3rd ILC, Second Lieutenant Frederick Ruscoe, was an old soldier. An ex-Regimental Sergeant Major of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, he enlisted in the army in 1883 and had been in France since December 1915, returning to England for a commission in 1916. His health was also poor and he would be sent home from France in 1918 and died in 1920. In command of 2nd ILC was Captain David Burles, a man in his early fifties. In August 1916, the Board recommended that he should serve at home, or as an officer in a labour battalion overseas. In England, he had been sent to help train men of the 30th Middlesex Regiment and then, in March, ordered to take 2nd ILC overseas.

During March and April, the first six companies embarked for France, to be followed in July and December by the remaining two. The first companies arrived on the Western Front during the bitter winter of 1916-17, beginning work that was severely hampered by snowstorms and a lack of available transport. The issue of transport greatly concerned Captain Burles, who noted down in the unit’s War Diary his repeated requests for vehicles of any kind. His unit was under the command of the Deputy Assistant Director of Labour, VII Corps, who promised to rectify the situation, although nothing materialised. On 14 April, four days after the company arrived to undertake work near the French town of Doullens, Burles wrote: ‘The Company is still without any transport whatsoever, and great difficulty is experienced hereby in procuring rations.’ Two days later he was griping again: ‘The supply dump is 15 kilometres distant. [We] have to depend on the kindness of other units to loan motor lorries. Secured one for today and drew three days’ rations. All iron rations.’ Burles’s transport problems did not improve for another ten days.

Is it possible that the issue over transport was an example of institutional prejudice against men of German extraction? These companies had arrived in France just as Britain unleashed its spring offensive near the town of Arras and, inevitably, the great preponderance of resources was sucked towards the battle. VII Corps was part of the Third Army, which was heavily engaged in the opening phases of the battle and, with the Western Front gripped by intense cold, causing both horse-drawn and petrol-driven vehicles to founder in snow and mud, serviceable transport was at a premium. Half a dozen labour companies, new to the front and regardless of their composition or characteristics, were never going to be made a priority at that moment. In the admittedly scant records concerning these ILCs, there is no evidence that they were treated appreciably better or worse than other units of the British Army.

The fact remained, however, that these men were not entirely trusted. They would not be employed at or near a base port nor, in theory, within sixteen kilometres of the trenches. They were unarmed and not supposed to handle ammunition and they were to be kept away from densely populated areas. Sensitive to issues of security, General Headquarters directed that they were not to be employed as mess cooks, barbers, waiters, clerks or orderlies. They were also barred from working in officers’ clubs or cinemas, although over time such restrictions were relaxed.