VI—"I GO TO SEE THE CROWN PRINCE"
I returned to the Hotel Staar just in time to meet the young lieutenant who had been instructed by General Moltke to take me to the Headquarters of the Crown Prince's Army. His name was Hans von Gwinner and he is the son of the great banker and Bagdad Railway magnate in Berlin. He was a wide-awake and capable young fellow and drove his car himself. I sat down beside him, whilst the orderly accompanying us took his seat inside.
It poured with rain as we left the town. The road was slippery, but we had studded tires and the lieutenant drove at terrific speed. We had started off rather late and we wanted to get in before dark. It is better thus, otherwise one is not entirely safe from the attentions of franctireurs. A whole lot of them had recently been caught by the Fifth Army and shot without hesitation....
We stop outside the house in which the General in Command of the 5th Army has taken up his quarters. I was able to speak there without difficulty to one of my friends from the Main Headquarters, Landrat Baron von Maltzahn, Member of the Reichstag and a personal friend of the Crown Prince. He was able to give me the welcome news that I was expected and that I must hurry in order to be in time for supper, which was served at eight o'clock. So we drove at once up to the little French château, where His I. & R. Highness had elected to stay. Here I said good-bye to my excellent friend Lieutenant von Gwinner and thanked him for his companionship. Thus he, too, disappears from my horizon, and I stand before a new association of acquaintances and friendships.
Footmen in military uniforms at once took charge of my baggage and conducted me to my room on the first floor, next door to the Crown Prince's private apartments. A few minutes before eight the acting Lord-in-Waiting, Court-Marshal von Behr, knocked at my door. He was a pleasant young man of distinguished and attractive appearance, and he had come to bring me in to supper. We went out through the upper vestibule and down the stairs, from the landing of which we were fortunate enough to witness a pleasing ceremony. In the lower hall stood a number of officers in line, and opposite them some twenty soldiers formed up in the same way. Then came the Crown Prince William, tall, slim and royally straight, dressed in a dazzling white tunic and wearing the Iron Cross of the first and second class; he walked with a firm step between the lines of soldiers. An adjutant followed him, carrying in a casket a number of Iron Crosses. The Crown Prince took one and handed it to the nearest officer, whom he thanked for the services which he had rendered to his Emperor and country, and then with a hearty handshake he congratulated the hero whom he had thus honored.
When all the officers had received their decorations, the reward for their bravery, the turn came of the soldiers, the ceremony being precisely the same as with the officers; but I found it hard to distinguish what the soldiers said in their loud, rough and nervous voices. At last I distinguished the words: Danke untertänigst Kaiserliche Hoheit (I humbly thank your Imperial Highness).