Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

The Boche gazed at the speaker with the glass-eyed expressionlessness peculiar to his race, bowed his thanks again, and departed. Whether or not he “got the idea” is not certain. My latest letter from the lieutenant contains the postscript, “I also had the satisfaction of granting another request for lumber for six coffins.”

They were singing a familiar old song with new words during my last weeks in Coblenz, the chorus beginning “The Rhine, the Rhine, the Yankee Rhine.” For many miles up and down the historic stream it seemed so indeed. I have been in many foreign ports in my day, and in none of them have I seen the American flag so much in evidence as at the junction of the Moselle and “Father Rhine.” The excursion steamers—those same side-wheelers on which you rode that summer you turned tourist, on which you ate red cabbage at a table hemmed in by paunchy, gross Germans who rolled their sentimental eyes as the famous cliff roused in them a lusty attempt to sing of the Lorelei with her golden hair—carried the Stars and Stripes at their stern now. They were still manned by their German crews; a resplendent “square-head” officer still majestically paced the bridge. But they were in command of American Marines, “snappy,” keen-eyed young fellows who had fought their way overland—how fiercely the Boche himself knows only too well—till they came to water again, like the amphibians that they are. A “leatherneck” at the wheel, a khaki-clad band playing airs the Rhine cliffs never echoed back in former years, a compact mass of happy Yanks packing every corner, they plow placidly up and down the stream which so many of their passengers never dreamed of seeing outside their school-books, dipping their flags to one another as they pass, a rubber-lunged “Y” man pouring out megaphoned tales and legends as each “castled crag,” flying the Stars and Stripes or the Tricolor now, loomed into view, rarely if ever forgetting to add that unsuspected little touch of “propaganda,” “Burned by the French in 1689.” Baedeker himself never aspired to see his land so crowded with tourists and sightseers as it was in the spring of 1919. Now and then a shipload of those poilus who waved to us from the shore as we danced and sang and megaphoned our way up through their territory came down past Coblenz, their massed horizon blue so much more tangible than our drab brown, their band playing quite other tunes than ours, the doughboys ashore shrilling an occasional greeting to what they half affectionately, half disdainfully call “the poor Frogs.” There was a somewhat different atmosphere aboard these horizon-blue excursion boats than on our own; they seemed to get so much more satisfaction, a contentment almost too deep for words, out of the sight of the sale Boche in manacles.

Boatloads of “Tommies” came up to look us over now and then, too, a bit disdainful, as is their nature, but friendly, in their stiff way, for all that, their columns of caps punctuated here and there by the cocked hat of the saucy “Aussies” and the red-banded head-gear of those other un-British Britons from the antipodes who look at first glance so startlingly like our own M. P.’s. Once we were even favored with a call by the sea-dogs whose vigil made this new Watch on the Rhine possible; five “snappy” little submarine-chasers, that had wormed their way up through the canals and rivers of France, anchored down beneath the gigantic monument at the mouth of the Moselle. You have three guesses as to whether or not the Germans looked at them with interest.

It was my good fortune to be able to make two excursions into unoccupied Germany while stationed on the Rhine. Those who fancy the sight of an American uniform beyond our lines was like shaking a red tablecloth in a Spanish bull-ring may be surprised to know that these little jaunts were by no means rare. We went not merely in full uniform, quite without camouflage, but in army automobiles and wholly unarmed—and we came back in a condition which a cockney would pronounce in the same way. The first spin was to Düsseldorf, between two of her Sparticist flurries. Not far above Bonn the landscape changed suddenly from American to British khaki, with a boundary post in charge of a circumspect English sergeant between. Below Cologne, with her swarming “Tommies” and her plump and comely girl street-car conductors and “motormen” in their green-banded Boche caps, we passed scores of the apple-cheeked boy recruits England was sending us to take the place of those who were “fed up with it,” and who gazed about them with that wide-eyed interest in every little detail of this strange new land which the traveler would fain keep to the end of his days. It seemed natural to find the British here; one had grown to associate them with the flat, low portions of the country. Far down the river a French post stopped us, but the sentry was so interested in posing before my kodak that he forgot to mention passes, and we were soon speeding on through a narrow horizon-blue belt. The Belgians, who turned the scene to brown again not far beyond, were even less exacting than the poilus. At the farther end of the great bridge over the Rhine between Neuss and Düsseldorf they had a score of sentries posted behind barbed-wire entanglements, touching the very edge of the unoccupied city. But our only formality in passing them was to shout over our shoulders, “Armée américaine!” that open sesame of western Europe for nearly two years.

Somewhat to our disappointment the atmosphere of Düsseldorf was very little different from that of an occupied city. The ubiquitous small boy surrounded us more densely wherever our car halted; the thronged streets stared at us somewhat more searchingly, but there was little other change in attitude to be noted. Those we asked for directions gave us the same elaborate courtesy and annoying assistance; the shops we entered served us as alertly and at as reasonable prices; the manufacturer we called on listened to our wants as respectfully as any of his fellows in the occupied zone—and was quite as willing to open a credit with the American army. The motto everywhere seemed to be “Business as usual.” There was next to nothing to suggest a state of war or siege anywhere within a thousand miles of us—nothing, at least, except a few gaunt youths of the ’19 class who guarded railway viaducts and government buildings, still wearing their full trench equipment, including—strange to believe!—their camouflaged iron hats! Postal clerks of the S. O. S. supposed, of course, that all this brand of head-gear had long since crossed the Atlantic. Humanity certainly is quick to recuperate. Here, on the edge of the greatest war in history, with the victorious enemy at the very end of the next street, with red revolution hovering in the air, life went on its even way; merchants sold their wares; street-cars carried their lolling passengers; children homeward bound from school with their books in the hairy cowhide knapsacks we had so often seen doing other service at the front chattered and laughed and played their wayside games.

The return to Coblenz was even more informal than the down-stream trip. Belgian, French, and British guards waved to us to pass as we approached; only our own frontier guard halted us, and from then on our right arms grew weary with returning the salutes that were snapped at us in constant, unfailing succession.

The second trip was a trifle more exciting, partly because we had no permission to carry it as far as we did—playing hooky, which in the army is pronounced “A. W. O. L.” keeps its zest all through life—partly because we never knew at what moment the war-battered “Dodge” would fall to bits beneath us, like the old one-horse shay, and leave us to struggle back to our billets as best we could. It was a cold but pleasant Sunday. Up the Rhine to Mainz nothing broke the rhythm of our still robust motor except the M. P. at the old stone arch that separated the American from the broad horizon-blue strip—the two journeys laid end to end made one realize what an enormous chunk of Germany the armistice gave the Allies. We halted, of course, at the cathedral of the French headquarters to see the “Grablegung Christi (1492),” as every one should, listened awhile to the whine of the pessimistic old sexton with his, “Oh, such another war will come again in twenty years or so; humanity is like that,” and sped on along a splendid highway to Wiesbaden. The French were making the most of their stay in this garden spot. They let no non-fraternizing orders interfere with enjoying the best the Kurhaus restaurant or cellars, the magnificent, over-ornate opera-house, the beautiful park, even the culture of the better class of German visitors, afforded.

Our pass read Wiesbaden and return, but that would have made a tame day of it. Rejuvenated of heart, if saddened of pocketbook, by the Kurhaus luncheon, we rattled swiftly on to the eastward. In due time we began to pass French outposts, indifferent to our passage at first, then growing more and more inquisitive, until there came one which would not be put off with a flip of the hand and a shouted “Armée américaine,” but brought us to an abrupt stop with a long, slim bayonet that came perilously near disrupting the even purr of our still sturdy motor. The crucial moment had come. If the French guard could read our pass we were due to turn back forthwith, chagrined and crestfallen. But none of us had ever heard of a French guard who could read an American pass, and we presented it with that lofty assurance which only those have not learned who wantonly wasted their time with the A. E. F. in France. The sentry received the pass dubiously, as we expected him to; he looked it over on both sides with an inwardly puzzled but an outwardly wise air, as we knew he would; he called his corporal, as we had foreseen; the corporal looked at the pass with the pretended wisdom of all his kind, handed it back with a courteous “Bien, messieurs,” as we were certain he would, and we sped on “into Germany.”

It was a bland and sunny afternoon. The suburban villages of Frankfurt were waddling about in their Sunday best, the city itself was promenading its less dowdy holiday attire along the wide, well-swept streets. We brought up at a square overlooked by a superbly proportioned bronze gentleman who had lost every stitch of his attire except his “tin hat,” where we left the car and mingled with the throng. Passers-by directed us courteously enough to the “Goethehaus.” Its door-bell handle dangled loosely, as it had fifteen years before, but a sign informed us that the place was closed on Sunday afternoons. The scattered crowd that had paused to gaze at our strange uniforms told us to come next day, or any other time than Sunday afternoon, and we should be admitted at once. We did not take the trouble to explain how difficult it would be for us to come another day. Instead, we strolled nonchalantly through the thickening throng and fell in with the stream of promenaders along the wide main street. There were four of us—Colonel—but never mind the name, for this one happened to be a perfectly good colonel, and he may still be in the army—and three other officers. We—or, more exactly, our uniforms—attracted a decided attention. The majority stared at us vacantly or with puzzled airs; now and then we saw some man of military age whisper our identity to his companion. No one gave any indication of a desire to molest us. Yet somehow the atmosphere about us was considerably more tense than in Düsseldorf. Twice we heard a “verdammte” behind us, but as one of them was followed by the word “Engländer” it may have been nothing worse than a case of mistaken identity. Still there was something in the air that whispered we had best not prolong our call beyond the dictates of good taste.

The shop-windows were fully as well stocked as those of Cologne or Coblenz; the strollers, on the whole, well dressed. Their faces, in the expert opinion of the colonel, showed no more signs of malnutrition than the average crowd of any large city. Here and there we passed a sturdy, stern-faced sailor, a heavy Browning or Luger at his side, reminding us that these men of the sea—or of the Kiel Canal—had taken over the police duties in many centers. Otherwise nothing met the eye or ear that one would not have seen in Frankfurt in days of peace.