THE RHINE AT COBLENZ
Drawn by Captain Ernest Peixotto, A. E. F.
That night we billeted for the first time in German territory. Regimental headquarters were in the country house of a German officer. On the news of our advance he had fled farther north, but, with the characteristic affectation of his class, telephoned, on our arrival, saying he regretted that he would not be there to receive us and hoped that we would be comfortable. Next morning he telephoned again, sending a message to the effect that if any of his servants had not done everything for our comfort would we please report the matter to him immediately in order that he might punish the offender.
All the next day we moved up the banks of the winding Moselle through Treves, where relics of the old Roman buildings frowned down on us as we passed. At night we stopped in another German house, from which the German officer had not fled. He was a lieutenant colonel and had waited to receive us, prepared to be butler or anything we demanded.
A real indication of the character of the German soldier was given by the terror of the women at our approach. It was clear that they expected any outrage. On account of this, on arriving in each town, when I would call the burgomaster to give him the instructions concerning the behavior of the townspeople, I would finish up by directing him to announce to all women and children that they need have no fear concerning the actions of any American soldier, that we were Americans, not Germans. I had my interpreter see that it was given out in this form.
Day after day we followed the river or made short cuts inland. As we marched along, on hilltops on either side, silhouetted against the sky, austere and dignified, were the crumbling brown-rock towers of medieval castles. These castles were destroyed more than two centuries before by Louis XIV as he marched by the same route. On either side of the river the slopes rose abruptly. They were covered with vineyards, apparently growing from the brown shale. Once, when we passed through the city of Berncastle, in the early morning, when the mist choked the valley, I looked up and saw on the peak that overhung the town, touched by the morning sun, the old keep framed in the white mist like a cameo set in mother-of-pearl. Time and again some Hun farmer would stop me and take me through a cow-shed to see the marble remains of some Roman bath or villa, the name of whose owner had long since vanished in the mists of time.
An odd incident of this march occurred when Lieutenant Barrett was ordered by me to go and instruct a German soldier we were passing concerning certain of our regulations. When Barrett reported back, he told me the man had come from his own home town in Indiana.
One thing that struck us all as we left France and reached Germany was the number of children. In France children are rare. Each community you passed you felt was composed of grown people. In Germany the streets were full of them—healthy-looking little rascals, pink-cheeked and well-nourished, wearing diminutive gray-blue uniforms like those of the German soldier. Little machine gunners, the men used to call them, for they looked like so many small replicas of those men we had been killing and who had killed us. Immediately upon the proclamation going out that the children would be in no way molested, these little rascals swarmed over everything. Nothing could satisfy their curiosity.
After weaving our way up the river valley and over the hills, one early December morning we found ourselves winding down from the surrounding hills toward the Rhine. As we swung around a rocky corner, the whole panorama lay before us—the gables and steeples of the town of Boppard with, as a background, the broad, undisturbed silver Rhine. On we wound down the rocky slope into the city, the flag flying at the head of the column. That night I formed the entire regiment in line on the terraced water front facing the river and, with the band playing The Star-Spangled Banner, stood retreat.
We waited here a day and then marched down the river to Coblenz. On this march we passed through one village, with old gates, little jutting houses carved and painted in bright colors, unchanged sixteenth-century Europe. Next was another village, factory towers smoking, great brick buildings filled with machinery, plain little board houses for the workmen, the epitome of modernism.
The night of December 12th we billeted at Coblenz. Next morning, at seven o'clock, the First Division in two columns crossed the Rhine, the first of the American troops. As the head of the column reached the center of the bridge and I looked at massive Ehrenbreitstein and up and down the historic river, I felt this truly marked the end of an era.