Meeting the Enemy (45 page)

In bars and cafés, British soldiers met former German servicemen, many of whom wore their greatcoats. Initial frostiness thawed as all understood that while they had been enemies on the battlefields they were, and remained, comrades in arms. It was only weeks since they had been at each other’s throats in France and Belgium but German and British soldiers soon shared tables and talked, using, as Graham recalled, the international language of hand gestures and schoolboy French.

We were all agog to find out where Fritz had fought against us, where we had faced one another.

‘You at Ypres.’

‘Moi aussi at Ypres.’

‘Compris Bourlon Wood? Moi at Bourlon Wood.’

‘Bapaume? Yes I know that fine, M’sewer. He’s been at Bapaume. Wounded, M’sewer? Twice? Moi three times.’

Our fellows would unloose their tunics and show the scars on their bodies. The German boys would do the same. Then, being unable to express themselves, both would grin in a sort of mutual satisfaction . . . We met a young man who had actually been opposed to our very unit in the Cambrai fighting of a year before.

Racial affinity certainly greatly contributed to bring about this reconciliation between the rank and file and the German people they met. The cleanliness of German towns and villages and of the people, the fair complexions of the women, the first-class state of German civilisation from an artisan’s point of view . . . ‘Well, Stephen,’ said a dour Scottish corporal to me at Zulpich, ‘I have been four and a half years out here, and have lived in France and in Belgium and now in Germany, and I can tell you the people I feel nearest to me are these. They are honester and cleaner, and somehow I feel I understand them better.’

He was ordinarily a very reserved fellow, but I know he had hated the Germans.

One man with reason to hate the Germans was Private Ginger Byrne. It was nearly two and a half years since he had seen the slaughter on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. That day he had been pinned down in no-man’s-land by a German machine-gunner who made it his personal aspiration to kill the young British private, but Byrne was not one to hold grudges.

I had been given a two-ounce packet of tobacco with a gold label on the front. You could chew it if you wanted. But I smoked fags and I’d had this packet in my pocket for six months. So I thought I’ll give old Jerry a present. Well, it was Christmas Eve and we’d been heaving quite different sorts of presents at each other for the previous four Christmases, hadn’t we?

So off I trudged through the snow. I went by myself, because if it turned out to be a little old lady by herself she might’ve been frightened if there’d been more than one soldier. I opened the gate and walked down the footpath and knocked on the door. An old German with one of those big pipes opened the door and he just looked at me. I didn’t know any German except ‘Gut morgen’ so I said that. Then I took this packet of baccy out of my pocket and offered it to him, and I held out my hand. So we shook hands. Then he stood back and motioned me to go inside.

His wife was there and his two sons. They all welcomed me and we all shook hands. They didn’t have much food, but they had a good fire and we all sat round the fire. The language barrier was terrible, but we tried speaking to each other in what bit of French we had. The old lady obviously couldn’t understand anything. The two sons gave me to understand they’d been machine-gunners in the German army. I said I’d been a machine-gunner too and we all nodded our heads. It was a pity I’d no German; we could have had a nice professional chat. I wondered afterwards if either of them could have been that gunner on the Somme in 1916. I’d willingly have shaken him by the hand; he knew his job all right . . .

I’d spotted a little accordion on one of the kitchen shelves. So I pointed to it and the old farmer got it down and gave it to me. I played ‘Silent Night’ and they sang it in German and I sang it in English. They really loved that. We enjoyed it so much we sang it twice. Their national anthem is one of our hymn tunes, you know. I learned all the words of the German national anthem when I was in school – in English, of course. In those days they were sort of relations of ours; still are . . . Funny really.

As barracks were occupied by men of the cavalry and infantry, so numerous aerodromes on the outskirts of Cologne were taken over by squadrons of the recently renamed Royal Air Force. The respect which opposing pilots accorded one another in combat was uninterrupted during the Occupation. Ernst Udet, the German ace whose sixty-two victories placed him second only to the great Baron von Richthofen, was a welcome visitor to RAF messes. At Bickendorf in early 1919, Udet spoke at length to British pilots including Captain Edward Crundall, recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and with seven victories to his name. Crundall recalled how Udet was ‘treated to drinks and talked about the war days when he was stationed at Douai and flying Albatross Scouts’.

Not everyone shared such tolerant views. There was low-level and persistent trouble in the city’s back streets, shops and bars, and brawls were common. There was petty and vindictive damage, too. One unidentified private whose portrait was taken by a German photographer wrote on the reverse. ‘This [picture] cost me two marks and it cost the man that took it 300 marks for a new camera.’ There was theft, soldiers helping themselves to cigarettes in shops with the self-serving excuse that, just as Germans had stripped Belgium bare, so British soldiers were entitled to dish out reciprocal medicine. Complaints poured into the civilian-run Occupation Office about the thoughtlessness of soldiers taking shortcuts across private gardens, trampling on plants. In private billets, homeowners submitted innumerable claims for broken china, damaged furniture, carpets ruined by spurs and cigarette burns. Low-level antagonism was to be expected. What surprised everybody was how well, in general, Britain’s Tommies rubbed along with the Germans.

Within months of the Versailles Peace Treaty being signed in June 1919, the number of British troops in Germany shrank to fewer than 10,000. The occupation gradually became another peacetime posting, albeit an attractive one as British soldiers saw their buying power rise concomitant to the declining value of the German currency, which faltered, then freefell. Families were allowed to join the occupying forces and a new source of friction developed between army wives and proud German
Hausfrauen
.

In the end, around 700 soldiers married German girls, and lifelong friendships were forged between soldiers and the families with whom they came into contact. Alfred Henn, a driver in the artillery, struck up a friendship with a German soldier that continued until the late 1990s. The pragmatic people of Cologne appreciated the security the British brought, not just for resisting interference from the political extremes tearing the rest of Germany apart, but from the French, whose bitterness at the damage wrought in northern France and the profligate loss of life poisoned post-war contact.

Violet Markham, who visited the Cologne Bridgehead in late 1919, was astonished at the calmness and relative tranquillity on the city’s bustling streets.

The outstanding fact in the occupied territory, and one which fills an English visitor with ever-growing amazement, is the complete acquiescence of the Germans in the situation. Life is astonishingly normal. These amazing people, outwardly at least, do not appear to mind that their country is occupied by hostile armies . . . A picture rose before my eyes of an English station occupied by German troops: would equal apathy and indifference have been shown under such conditions? In this as in many other aspects the German psychology is a riddle to which no answer seems forthcoming, and it is a riddle the perplexity of which will be found to deepen with every hour spent in the occupied territory.

Of course these were not ‘Germans’ inasmuch as they were not Bavarians, Hannoverians or Schwaben. These civilians were Rhinelanders, and Rhinelanders prided themselves on an easy nature and gentle pragmatism. Security and relative stability brought by the British after such a devastating war was worth more at that moment than unfettered freedom and probable chaos. No population enjoys being occupied but the Germans had come to call the British-controlled Cologne Bridgehead ‘the Island of the Blessed’, and for good reason.

The wartime blockade on Germany remained in force while the victorious nations met at Versailles to wrangle over a treaty to be presented to the German nation as a fait accompli. Meanwhile, the acute food shortages in Germany continued and in January 1919 the British government acted to alleviate the suffering. In the Rhineland, the average daily civilian intake had shrunk to barely 1,000 calories per person. Orders were given that surplus stores, including 12,000 tons of meat and 100,000 tons of potatoes, were to be shipped from Rotterdam and Antwerp to the west bank of the Rhine. The situation was just as dire in Berlin where there remained a small British contingent, including Princess Evelyn Blücher and the Reverend Henry Williams. In response, the British government authorised surplus Red Cross supplies to be distributed among British residents in the capital, but included an important rider: ‘Beneficiaries must be genuine British subjects and not include British born wives whose husbands are of enemy nationality.’ It meant that naturalised British subjects of German birth living in Germany had a greater right to these parcels than women born in Britain and married to Germans, as long as they could prove ‘a satisfactory connection with the British Empire during residence in Germany’, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Ada Crosley was desperately worried about her daughter, Lillian Stephan, and her young grandson. Lillian married a German in 1910 and had, prior to the war, moved to Arnstadt where she remained. Although she was considered German by British authorities, her mother insisted her daughter had never been naturalised and neither had her grandson. By January 1919 mother and daughter were practically starving. In a letter to the Red Cross Society, Ada pleaded for help.

I had a letter today from her begging very hard for food for herself and child whose health is a great anxiety for her for want of food and milk. She has tried to get home to England for the sake of the child’s life. We have no wish nor has she for her husband, only herself and child. Can she soon come home to be fed before it’s too late or can I send her food for the child, please, please can you help in some way to do something . . . she has no German sympathies, but is a thorough true Englishwoman. I have had three sons at the war all wounded severely, one a prisoner, but my daughter’s plight is my greatest trial.

A reply came shortly afterwards: ‘The Minister of Blockade has been consulted regarding this matter, and has decided that food should only be supplied, for the present, to genuine British subjects. Accordingly assistance should not be given to Mrs Stephan.’

British-born women who had married for love effectively remained outcasts. By contrast, a German-born woman, Malvina Mendelssohn, received aid once the authorities had checked that her German husband was naturalised British in the 1870s. He had died in the 1890s and his wife moved to Wiesbaden. On the outbreak of war, and owing to her British nationality, she was forced to leave Wiesbaden, spending the rest of the war in Frankfurt. Old and in ill health, she was in a desperate plight but food parcels would be on their way to her. ‘Inform the CPWC [Central Prisoners of War Committee] that Mrs Mendelssohn is a British subject and that there is no objection to their supplying her with food from Berlin.’

Government policy angered some senior British officers working in Berlin. One, Major General Sir Richard Ewart, complained about the extreme unfairness involved in the ‘hard and fast rule’ that penalised these British-born women. ‘The result was to exclude a considerable number of very deserving cases and to include many which were clearly not so deserving.’ Despite his protestations, Sir Richard was given his instructions: there was to be no change, although he was at least given the courtesy of a three-point explanation.

1. If once we begin to allow food to go freely to wives of Germans, there will be an end to the blockade.

2. To relieve the wife is to relieve the husband and I think the principle is unsound, especially as we hear from the Netherlands Minister in Berlin of the number of British subjects there who are in need of relief.

3. The British-born wife of a German is no longer a British subject . . . German subjects should be helped by their own Government out of the supplies allowed under the terms of the armistice and any such future supplies – not by the British Red Cross.

If these British-born women were going to be fed, they would have to return to Britain. In March 1919, in a Foreign Office file, an official set out the prevailing view. ‘It’s a Home Office matter, but their attitude we know is that British born
widows
of Boches may be permitted to come to this country provided that they undertake to apply for naturalisation as soon as possible after arrival. I do not think any children who were German nationals would be admitted.’ It was a stance that would not alter until peace was signed; until then, it was unlikely that any British-born ‘German’ mother was about to leave her children behind.