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.