CHAPTER XXI
IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY
The German soldiers, who were guarding me, seemed to be decent sort of men, and treated me fairly well, as soldiers who have been fighting each other usually act. All through my army experience I have found that those in safe non-combatant positions are the most fierce and relentless towards those who are disarmed and helpless. My captors allowed me to use my first aid bandages, with which I bound up my hurts as best I could.
The sprain was so painful that I could not walk, and they had almost to carry me to the rear. My arm also stung.
I noticed on every side the destruction wrought by war. I could not have believed such ruin possible, had I not seen it. Abandoned guns, broken gun-carriages and air craft, ammunition piled up to be abandoned or destroyed, supplies and munitions amid wrecks of ruined buildings, and trampled yellow grain. Several of these grain fields had been fired by the invaders and extinguished by the merciful rain. Among the life-sustaining grain were dead men, dead horses and in two instances I saw badly wounded Prussian soldiers that had been abandoned in the necessity for haste, or because they were of no further use. There were, also, the lesser wreckage of fragments of clothing, knapsacks, broken rifles and innumerable small fragments of war’s ruin and ravage.
I was in considerable pain and constantly cried out when hurried; for I intended to emphasize my injuries for purposes of my own. My captors were, apparently, disgusted with me. They talked and gestured until I began to fear that they were debating whether or not to lessen their trouble by knocking me on the head. Finally they picked up a discarded rifle, halted, and fitted a piece of wood in the muzzle, and handing it to me, made motions that I was to use it for a crutch.
That night, while shut in the room of a partially ruined dwelling, I was helped to wash, and put cold water bandages on my hurts and slept fairly well. In the morning the pain from my sprain was mostly gone. I washed my wounded arm and wet and rewound my bandages. I could have walked had I chose; but I determined to keep that hurt for strategic use; for I had firmly resolved not to go to a German prison. Their reputation as providers was so bad that, to use expressive slang, “I couldn’t see it.”
All the food I was given up to that time was some coarse wheat bread and not a scrap of meat; and some hot water bewitched into imitation of coffee. But the guards themselves did not have any better fare so far as I could see.
One of my two guards was a clean-faced, good-looking German boy who seemed of a higher class than his heavy-faced comrade. He took my crutch from me and made motions that I was to stand. I tried to look meek and obedient, and cried out and buckled up with pretended pain. Seeing this, he restored my rifle crutch, and put one hand under my arm to help me as I limped painfully along.
While I was on the outlook for a chance to use my crutch for a club and my legs for escape, my hopes were dashed by the guard taking me to a large house, around which sentinels were stationed.
After a parley with a sentinel who was pacing the broad doorway, I was conducted into a large room where were several officers, orderlies and clerks, some of them writing at a big table, on which were spread maps, papers, and big books that looked like ledgers.