Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

As a refinement of cruelty the Dutch authorities submitted us to a second customs examination, even more searching than that at our arrival. They relentlessly ferreted out the foodstuffs hidden away in the most unlikely corners of the smallest luggage, and dropped them under the low counter at their feet. An emaciated woman bearing an Austrian passport was thus relieved of seventeen parcels, down to those containing a half-pound of butter or a slice of cheese. In her case not even her midday train lunch escaped. No one could complain that the blockade requirement against Holland reshipping to Germany was being violated at Oldenzaal. As we passed out the door to the platform a soldier ran his hands up and down our persons in search of suspicious lumps and bulges. My Dutch identity card had been taken away from me; I no longer had the legal right to exist anywhere. Once on the train, however, the food blockade proved to have been less watertight than it had seemed. As usual, the “wise ones” had found means of evading it. Several experienced travelers had provided themselves with official authorization to bring in ten or twelve pounds of Lebensmittel. A few others aroused the envy of their fellow-passengers—once the boundary was passed—by producing succulent odds and ends from secret linings of their baggage. One loud-voiced individual asserted that there was much smuggling through the forests beside us. It is not likely, however, that the food that escapes the Oldenzaal search brought much relief to the hunger of Germany.

The thin-faced Austrian woman sat hunched in a far corner of the compartment, noiselessly crying. Two middle-aged Germans of the professor-municipal-employee caste whispered cautiously together on the opposite cushion. As we passed the swampy little stream that marks the boundary they each solemnly gave it a military salute, and from that moment on raised their voices to a quite audible pitch. One displayed a sausage he had wrapped in a pair of trousers. The other produced from a vest pocket a tiny package of paper-soap leaves, each the size of a visiting-card. He pressed three or four of them upon his companion. The latter protested that he could not accept so serious a sacrifice. The other insisted, and the grateful recipient bowed low and raised his hat twice in thanks before he stowed the precious leaves away among his private papers. They passed a few remarks about the unfairness of the food blockade, particularly since the signing of the armistice. One spoke scornfully of the attempt of the Allies to draw a line between the German government and the people—there was no such division, he asserted. But by this time we were grinding to a halt in Bentheim, in all probability the end of my German journey.

The passengers and their hand-luggage jammed toward a door flanked by several German non-coms. and a handsome young lieutenant. I pressed closely on the heels of the American courier. He was received with extreme courtesy by the German lieutenant, who personally saw to it that he was unmolested by boundary or customs officials, and conducted him to the outgoing waiting-room toward which we were all striving. Meanwhile a sergeant had studied my passport, quite innocent of the German visé, dropped it into the receptacle of doubtful papers, and motioned to me to stand back and let the others pass, exactly as I had expected him to do. How ridiculous of me to fancy I could bluff my way through a cordon of German officials, as if they had been French or Italian! Would they shut me up or merely toss me back on the Dutch? The last of my legitimate fellow-passengers passed on into the forbidden land and left me standing quite alone in the little circle of German non-coms. One of them rescued my passport and handed it to the handsome young lieutenant as he returned. He looked at me questioningly. I addressed him in German and slipped the weak-kneed Food Commission letter into his hands. Perhaps—but, alas! my last hope gave a last despairing gasp and died; the lieutenant read English as easily as you or I!

“You see,” I began, lamely, “as a correspondent, and more or less connected with the Food Commission, I wished to have a glimpse of the distribution from Hamburg—and I can catch one of their ships back from there to Rotterdam. Then as the lieutenant I am with speaks no German, I offered to act as interpreter for him on the way. I ... I....”

I was waiting, of course, to hear the attentive listener bellow the German version of, “You poor fish! do you think you can pull that kind of bull on me!” Instead, he bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my explanation and looked more closely at my passport.

“You should have had this stamped at the German Legation in The Hague,” he remarked, softly.

“I did not know until shortly before the train left that the lieutenant was coming,” I added, hastily, “so there was no time for that. I thought that, with the letter from the Food Commission also....”

Either I am really very simple—in my particular asinine moments I feel the certainty of that fact—or I have been vouchsafed the gift of putting on a very simple face. The German gazed an instant into my innocent eyes, then glanced again at the letter.

“Yes, of course,” he replied, turning toward an experience-faced old Feldwebel across the room. “Will you be kind enough to wait a moment?”

This gentle-voiced young officer, whom I had rather expected to kick me a few times in the ribs and perhaps knock me down once or twice with the butt of his side-arm, returned within the period specified and handed my papers back to me.