Brotherhood Again.
And yet—“We picked up scrappily the hint, however, that ‘some of the Germans were all right.’” This from an article in the Times on a homecomer from the front. With unconscious self-revelation the writer adds: “That somehow sounds depressing. One has heard the opposite.” Just so, it is disconcerting and depressing to have it suggested that the enemy is a man very much like ourselves; it injures our feeling of superiority. We “confess” any favourable impression of him as if it were a fault of our own. A correspondent of the Petit Parisien tells of the capture of a German officer of Hussars, near Arras. “I confess,” he says, “that the impression he produced was rather favourable than otherwise.” (Daily Telegraph, June 11, 1915.)
With others the confession is less reluctant.
There’s one spot in Ploegsteert Wood that German shells ought never to reach. It’s a grave with a carefully made wooden cross on it, and the lettering says:
“Here lie two gallant German officers.”
“That’s rather unexpected,” said a civilian who was with us.
“But they were brave,” said the major. “The Germans aren’t always so bad. Five officers from my regiment were missing one time, and we never even expected to find their bodies. But when we drove the Germans back we found a grave on which was marked: ‘Here lie five brave English officers.’ We identified them all, and their bodies were taken back to England.”
We followed another sidewalk and came to a huge mound covered with yellow flowers, which had been planted by the English soldiers. On a neatly made cross at the head of the mound an English soldier had patiently printed the words: “Here lie seventeen German soldiers.”
There wasn’t an English grave in Ploegsteert Wood that was better tended or more heavily beflowered than these mounds of fallen Germans.—Mr. W. G. Shepherd, Special Correspondent of the United Press.
Daily News, June 1, 1915.
If all the episodes of this action were recorded they would make a long as well as a grim narrative revealing the ghastliness, the wild passion, the self-sacrifice, and the cool cunning of such an hour or two of modern war.
Some of the tales of the men would have been incredible except that I heard them from soldiers who told the truth that lives on the lips of men who have seen very close into the face of death.
It is, for instance, difficult to believe—yet true—that amidst all this tumult and terror of noise one German prisoner was taken as he sat very calmly in his dug-out reading a book of religious meditations through gold-rimmed spectacles. Perhaps it was the man—I only guess—in whose pocket-book was found a letter to his wife saying, “The position here is hellish, and death is certain. I only pray that it may come soon.”
Daily Telegraph, August 16, 1915.
From Belfort in September came the report: “A German aviator this morning flew over Belfort, dropping a wreath on the spot where Pégoud was killed. The following inscription was placed on the wreath: ‘To Pégoud, who dies a hero. (Signed) His Adversary.’”
The following is from the Daily News of October 9, 1915:
The parents of a Lance-Corporal in a Highland regiment who was killed in the recent fighting have received particulars about their son’s death from a German lady in Frankfurt-on-Main.
The lady’s eldest brother was killed last year near Ypres and she knows, she says, how glad they were to receive any details of his death. Another brother, who is an officer in the German army, had written from the front, begging her to inform the dead soldier’s relatives of his fate.
In her letter the lady says: “Although we are enemies, pain and mourning unite us. So thought my brother, too, for he wrote everything about your son he could find out. I am sure my brother and his comrades did all honour to their enemies.”
The next extract is from the Nation of November 13. 1915:
Soldiers are not reluctant to speak well of their foes. The officer son of a friend of mine relates that beyond his line of trenches is a German commemoration of a British advance in the shape of a carefully wrought cross, bearing the inscription: “Sacred to the memory of Lieutenants A—— and B—— of the Staffordshire Regiment, who died like heroes.”
From a private letter: “What impresses one most are the graveyards. All these are beautifully kept, all the graves have been cared for, and no distinction has been drawn between German, English, and French, who lie side by side. ‘Hier ruht ein tapferer Engländer, gefallen im Luftkampf’ (Here lies a brave Englishman, fallen in the air fight), etc., etc.”
The Daily News of March 10, 1919, has the following:
From a staff sergeant in Germany: “Here, in Germany, an English officer with the ’flu was nursed by his landlady, who, when her patient was better, succumbed to its ravages. Her daughter caught it from the mother, and is now lying at death’s door. But merely ‘Huns,’ I suppose.”
The roll of honour in the chapel at New College, Oxford, includes the names of three Germans, and the words of charity: Pro patria—Memento fratres in Christo.