Meeting the Enemy (44 page)

That evening we went to see a ballet on skates which had in it a skit on the Hohenzollern family, which passed without comment from the audience. After the theatre we visited a bar in the building to get a drink. It was a long narrow room with the bar counter at one end and a solitary fiddler at the other. Between the counter and the fiddler were a number of chairs fairly well occupied, a large group of German officers being prominent. We got our drinks and found seats, but we had not been there long when something made me turn to look at the fiddler and found that he was facing me and playing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. Not only that but after a few moments half the people in the bar joined in. The officers did not stand and as we had no wish to be mixed up in any demonstration we left.

The next day Rees was given his papers to leave Germany. They were signed by the new War Minister whose previous job, Rees was amused to hear (erroneously, as it appears) had been that of a bartender in New York.

It would be many months before German prisoners would begin their journey home. Until a peace treaty was signed and the war officially over, the Allies were not about to deliver hundreds of thousands of combat-hardened soldiers to the enemy. Those Germans taken prisoner in the last spasms of fighting in October and November, and who were still in France and Belgium, would be used as orderlies in hospitals or as labour out on the battlefields clearing up the mess that they had helped create.

At the end of November 1918 John and Eliza Brewster received a letter from Sergeant Egbert Wagner. In May 1915, Wagner had saved the life of their son, Lieutenant James Brewster, after heavy fighting at Ypres, and through correspondence a friendship was established. The Brewsters had fervently hoped that Sergeant Wagner would survive the war ‘to do other good work’ and that hope had been realised: Egbert had been transferred to the Russian Front and taken prisoner but was released after Russia sued for peace.

Sergeant Wagner, through his Danish intermediary, contacted the Brewsters once more. His brother, Lieutenant Theobald Wagner, serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 12th Company, had been badly wounded in the chest and captured at the end of August 1918. At the end of the war, Theobald Wagner, having been shipped to England, was still in a military hospital in Sutton Veny, in Wiltshire, but was soon to be removed to an officers’ camp.

Egbert Wagner wrote,

My request is as follows: would it be in any way possible for you to adopt my brother on your estate in any capacity as ‘worker’, in order that under more favourable conditions he might have the opportunity to get his lung trouble mended?

The assistance I was able to render your son claims no recompense, but our hearts would be rejoiced by any possibility of the return of a like kindness.

Lieutenant James Brewster had been exchanged as unfit for active service, although by the Armistice he had recovered sufficiently to take up duty with a home squadron of the RAF in Norfolk. On receiving a letter from his father, he travelled to Taunton to the officers’ POW camp where Theobald Wagner had been taken, and although he was unable to see Lieutenant Wagner personally he managed to get a message through and with it an offer of help. It appears that the Brewster family could not employ Lieutenant Wagner after all, but they lent him some money and managed to get hold of a considerable number of clothes for him; with winter closing in, he had nothing to wear other than the hospital uniform he stood up in.

Germany and Britain remained technically at war, but the Wagners and the Brewsters had long since been at peace.

11

An Expedient Divorce

After leaving Berlin, Brigadier General Rees proceeded to The Hague where he reported to the British Embassy the following day. He fully expected to find the staff ‘thoroughly cheerful with the successful conclusion to the war’ but instead he arrived in an atmosphere of anxiety and rumour. Everyone was convinced that Field Marshal Hindenburg was creating a new army outside Hanover with which to renew the fight. It took Rees the best part of two hours to convince the ambassador that no such army existed. This achieved, Rees was packed off to the War Office in London to see and reassure the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, that ‘We really had won the war and [that] the Germans knew it’. Rees remained perplexed by the paranoia.

My only explanation of what seems a curious phenomenon is that, the armies having lost contact with each other, the Allies were solely dependent on the reports of secret agents. The agents who knew perfectly well that the war was over saw no object in making further reports. The result was a state of intense anxiety amongst responsible people who, faced with a complete absence of any real news, were half inclined to give credence to the wildest rumours.

For two days after the ceasefire there was no communication between the Allies and the Germans. The latter were clear about what the terms of the Armistice obliged them to do. The Allies would hold their line while the German army began its march home, abandoning vast quantities of weaponry as they went. The Germans’ head start was in order to avoid any possible clashes between opposing armies but, as Rees pointed out, this created uncertainty and the ridiculous conjecture that the Germans might opt to fight on.

The British Army’s senior command had far more pressing problems to deal with than to take notice of idle fears. Before the ceasefire, the Germans had laid booby-traps in towns and villages through which Allied troops would pass. They also planted explosives to blow up important road junctions and these would have to be dealt with by engineers and, where necessary, roads rebuilt. River crossings had been destroyed and pontoons were needed; smashed railway signalling and switching equipment required immediate repair. The first wireless traffic post-11 November was in response to the Allies’ urgent need to know where German delayed-action mines were hidden and which roads were currently impassable or badly damaged.

On the ground, the Allied infantry remained on the defensive and instructions were issued forbidding fraternisation; spare time would be used by the men to clean up. In what became known as the ‘pomp and polish order’, all arms were to achieve a level of smartness that brought home to the enemy the reality of its defeat and, correspondingly, the high morale and battle-readiness of the Allies.

Although the ‘talk’ had been of waging war to Berlin’s gates, there was no appetite to cross the greater part of Germany to reach the enemy’s capital, despite the symbolism attached to entering the city. Instead, the Allies would march on the Rhineland but no further: of the British Expeditionary Force’s five armies, only the Second Army was given the privilege of crossing the border.

The Allied occupation and control of the industrial and commercial jewel of Germany would undoubtedly focus the attention of Germany’s politicians on a lasting peace settlement. The Germans knew that the Armistice was simply a cessation of hostilities, the Allies reserving the right to reignite the campaign should the Germans become non-compliant.

On 1 December 1918, the first Allied troops crossed into Germany. Stephen Graham, a Scots Guards private, was one of the first over the border.

We were thoroughly proud of ourselves, as if we ourselves had won the war, and we entered each German village with the air of conscious pride and with that
élan
which might well characterise the first British troops to enter. We believed always that we dazzled the Germans, and that they were rubbing their eyes and asking in surprise, ‘Are these the English whom we once despised?’

The Rhineland was partitioned: the Belgians took Düsseldorf to the north of Cologne, the French the region of the Eiffel, including Koblenz to the south, and the Americans occupied Wiesbaden, sixty miles south-east of Koblenz. Haig, in a masterstroke of negotiation, took control of the Rhineland’s most important commercial hub, Cologne. He allowed the French, still boiling at the destruction of northern France, to forgo judgement and seize by far the biggest chunk of the Rhineland, including swathes of unimportant farmland and forests: the French had landmass but at the cost of influence. By contrast, the British held a relatively small portion of ground that included a city that was the industrial, financial and transport centre of the region.

At the beginning of December, the citizens of Cologne welcomed home German troops as heroes. Rhenish flags were raised and bunting and banners draped across city streets, reassuring truculent soldiers that civilians honoured their sacrifice. Those flags came down as the final soldiers crossed the Rhine, and the city prepared for British troops.

During the hiatus, trouble broke out as gangs of radicalised former soldiers roamed the streets. City security was threatened and the mayor, Konrad Adenauer, politely asked the British to hurry up in order to restore calm. The 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, the regiment that had taken part in the first action four years before, rode into Cologne on 6 December with one squadron forming up outside the cathedral under the gaze of curious civilians. By the terms of the ceasefire, all serving German soldiers were marched east of the Rhine, leaving the city open. To ensure this had happened, two troops under Second Lieutenant Kenneth Stanley rode over the giant river-spanning Hohenzollern Bridge.

After posting sentries at the bridge’s western end, Stanley crossed to find a ten-man German guard on the far side where, using a mixture of hand signals and pidgin French, he conveyed his belief that the Germans should not be there. Some minutes later a staff car drew up and out stepped a much-decorated German general who assured Stanley that the British were not meant to cross the river until 12 December. A compromise was reached with the Germans ceding two-thirds of the bridge to enable the British to keep observation. A chalk line was drawn to signify the divide, while a German officer was ordered to report each sunrise to the British until he and his men were withdrawn.

The Second Army fanned out through Cologne and into neighbouring towns such as Bonn. The men took up residence in abandoned barracks, freezing halls, theatres and schoolrooms: eighty-eight schools were requisitioned for troops. Officers were sent to live in private homes, and the population of Cologne grew by a quarter. Where necessary, NCOs and even privates were ordered to sleep under the same roof as German families, some of whom still expected their own soldier sons home at any time.

Living cheek by jowl with British soldiers was not the great hardship it first appeared to be, for hungry families quickly discovered their ‘guests’ brought with them much-needed food and toiletries purchased from the army’s well-stocked canteens.

Military law was introduced, with a 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. curfew. Identity cards were compulsory and freedom of movement restricted. Letters were subject to censorship and telephone calls forbidden. No newspapers or leaflets could be printed without express military permission. The rule of non-fraternisation continued and British soldiers were expected to walk about in twos or more and bearing side arms. No disrespect, intended or otherwise, would be tolerated. As a result, civilians who failed to remove their hats in the presence of British officers had them firmly clipped from their heads; a truculent policeman who attempted to cross the road between companies of a marching battalion was left lying in the gutter. As one journalist wrote, ‘British rule settles on a district as softly as snow, but freezes as hard as ice.’

Britain’s military leaders and politicians worried unnecessarily about the Bolshevik contagion in Germany spreading among British ranks. To stifle its influence, the British steadfastly refused to work with anyone except existing, properly constituted civil authorities. They declined to recognise any revolutionary governments such as those that briefly existed in Bavaria or Mainz, while within the British Bridgehead, Rhenish separatists and communist Sparticists were watched and, if necessary, expelled. To remain broadly dispassionate, the British were equally firm with right-wing units of the German Freikorps and determinedly refused to sanction the chasing of suspected left-wing ‘felons’ who escaped into the safety of the British zone.

‘The people welcomed us as rescuers from anarchy,’ wrote Guardsman Norman Cliff. When he came across a gang terrorising a shopkeeper, he and fellow Guardsmen ‘weighed in’ until the thugs dispersed. ‘The gratitude of the weeping family was overwhelming, and nothing would satisfy them until the father fetched the Iron Cross he had won and handed it to me, emphatically rejecting my appeals to take it back.’

As with most soldiers, the primary concern was for their own welfare and a chance to enjoy the trappings of a beautiful, largely untouched city. The ban on fraternisation was subverted as soldiers mixed with civilians, especially those fortunate enough to be in private billets, although, as Private Stephen Graham saw, the losses of war touched many families.

When we entered into the German houses we saw on many walls and shelves the photographs of soldiers, and as we asked of each we learned the melancholy story – wounded, dead, dead, wounded. Death had paused at every German home. The women brought out their family albums and showed us portraits of themselves as they were before the war, and asked us to compare that with what they looked like now.