Behind the German lines, a narrative of the everyday life of an American prisoner of war

Preface

" How did the Germans treat you ? " That question was asked me so often on my return to America that I decided to write, for the information of my friends who have manifested such a kindly interest in our experience, a full account of what happened to my comrades and myself during my seven months behind the German Hnes as a prisoner of war. This is not an exciting story, for the life of a prisoner was at best a most wearisome existence. Yet the life in itself was so different from anything I had known before that there was for me always an endless interest which tended to lessen the hardships and the sense of danger.

Ralph E. Ellin wood.

BiSBEE, Arizona, September i, igiQ-

Contents

PAGE

Preface

V

Chapter I

Section Sanitaire U. 621 had been relieved from duty along with the 74th French Division to which it was attached, early in May, when the English took over the sector northwest of Rheims. We had just gotten comfortably settled in the grounds of an old chateau owned by a Polish prince by the name of Poniatowski. There we enjoyed an idle life of repose, wandering around the grounds, reading in the shade of its stately elms, or watching the fish play among the lily pads in the ancient moat. Only an occasional boche avion, regularly shelled by the French anti-aircraft guns, reminded us that we lay somewhere behind the Hnes. Then, hurried orders came for us to move to Pernant, eight kilometers west of Soissons.

During one of the few afternoons before leaving, another driver and I strayed down to the meadow and talked over what the future possibly held in store for the Section. It was remarked that we had had too easy an existence, for since I had joined the Section, in December, 191 7, we had suffered nothing more than one shelHng of our cantonment and an occasional piece of eclat in one or more of the ambulances. We came to the conclusion that we were headed for the Somme, and that meant, if the rumors were true, that we were to undergo a heavy punishment during the coming weeks. Yet, I believe that most of us were anxious to get into a big battle.

We had been at Pernant only a few days, quartered in a frame schoolhouse, when, on the evening of May 26th, a call came in for three ambulances for detached duty with the Medecine Divisionaire, chief doctor for the division. Everyone wanted to go, such a call being considered a pleasant change from the usual routine work, and at the time it meant getting on the road again and away from camp. The lot fell to Jack Savoy, of Holyoke, Massachusetts, who spoke excellent French, to P. L. Bixby, of Long Beach, California, and myself. The call in itself indicated a movement. If there were any rumors concerning a German attack, I do not recall them, but as I look back there seems to have been an atmosphere of excitement and pending action. We pulled out, Jack in the lead, following the road toward Soissons, crossing the river Aisne north towards Pommiers and then west to Osly-Courtil, where, as our permi rouge read, we were to be stationed. We parked our cars in the small Place des Etats-Unis, under the foliage of the bordering trees, which offered a splendid camouflage. There we waited until the doctor should need us.

Osly-Courtil was divisional headquarters and thus full of staff cars, coming and going, with their lights piercing the darkness ; others with no lights crawling quietly into the village to avoid detection. Now and then a camion would rumble through the village. We could not sleep, although we had rolled into our blankets on stretchers in the back of our cars.

An orderly informed us, about midnight, that a car would be needed at 4.30 a.m., to go to Crouy. We tossed for it, and the lot fell to me. It was about that time, a little before or after midnight, that the front broke into a long rumble, rolling like heavy thunder — an ominous foreboding. None of the shells was hitting near, so we dozed off for a few hours. At four o'clock I drove over to the officers' quarters. The French doctor and his aide were waiting, and we put his rather bulky equipment in the rear of the car. Recrossing the Aisne we headed for Soissons. The doctor, a slight man of perhaps fifty years, with a kindly face and gentle eyes, remained silent, save for spasmodic remarks offering me advice on my driving. If a shell hit on the road ahead of us he exclaimed, doMcement! or, if we heard an explosion behind us, his exclamation was, allez toute suite!

We passed through Soissons shortly after daylight. Never shall I forget the strained expressions on the faces of the civilians who, from their doorsteps, were watching the few cars that were hurrying through the almost deserted streets. Only a few days before, several of us had driven into the city for provisions. The shops were then open, the vegetables and meats temptingly displayed, and the inhabitants apparently forgetful that they were living directly under the German guns. But this morning Soissons was awake early, watching and waiting for the developments of the battle of which the bombardment was only a forewarning. Over the Pont Neuf, across the Aisne, and three kilometers out to Crouy, we hurried.

The summer before I had worked in the French transport service, in this vicinity, and I enjoyed the familiar scenes, noting a few changes here and there, but the most conspicuous were the results of the previous night's shelling. Fresh shell-holes lay along the road, where the boche had attempted to destroy supply trains going up to the lines. At Crouy we swung into a courtyard. My orders were to wait. Crouy was then the object of Austrian * ' whizz-bangs, ' ' a high velocity shell which explodes almost as quickly as the noise of its approach is heard. Having had no breakfast, I grabbed my cup and hunted up a French kitchen, which I found across the street. There I poked my head in the door and asked for some coffee. A French officer — for I had intruded into an officers' mess — offered me coffee, bread, and confiture, a very acceptable meal. When I returned to the car I found the doctor was waiting, and we drove to another courtyard in the village. The doctor ordered me to remain in a wine cellar which he pointed out, while he himself hunted quarters for his first aid station. The shelling had steadily increased, so that I was perfectly satisfied to remain under cover.

Once in a while I went to the entrance, but only to duck back when a shell hit close.

About noon the doctor came down and told me my car was full of wounded. Allez a Vassemy toute suite was his order, as he gently helped into his coat a poilu wounded in the shoulder. The roads were becoming packed and the dust rose with the heavy traffic. Ambulances raced in and out, having the right of way; dispatch riders tore along, all covered with the white dust. I avoided Soissons, taking the road towards Vailly along the river, which I crossed just south of Bucy-le-Long, joining the Soissons- Rheims road near Venizel. The railroad station there resembled a pepper-box, and what was once a locomotive lay scattered over the torn-up tracks. There I took a road, going through a bit of woods, which had been occupied by mounted troops. Here the roads were torn by shell-fire and a horse or two lay dead amid the fragments of foliage stripped from the trees. My heart almost bled at the tragedy significantly told along the road from there on to Vassemy. A child's slipper, an old man's cane, a torn straw hat, a bit of woman's finery, and over it rolled the equipment of war — soldiers walking and riding, trucks, ammunition caissons, heavy guns, behind groaning caterpillars, and here and there a few wounded, tired and haggard, carrying some bloody trace of the night and morning's battle, as they walked back to a hospital. I gave one a lift on my already loaded car. He would not leave his pack, so I dumped it on the fender. How unlike an American

— ^in the worst hour of suffering the French hold fast to their small earthly possessions, which is probably due to their national characteristic of thrift.

Just before reaching Vassemy hospital, a French avion had hit a boche plane. As the latter fell, he sprinkled the road with his mitrailleuse, which caused the mounted troops ahead of me to spread on each side of the road as little puffs of dust arose marking where the bullets hit. I turned in time to see the boche dig his nose in the field and his machine burst into flames.

Vassemy was overcrowded, and we were turned away with orders to go on to Mont Notre Dame, three or four miles distant. As I swung back on the highway, I caught a glimpse of the stretcher cases being loaded on to a waiting hospital train.

I went on. Braisne, as I had known it less than two weeks before, was far from being the same when I bumped over its cobblestones. Now, no soldiers loitered around, the stores on the main street were closed, and great holes gaped in the deserted houses and streets. As I turned off the main street and crossed the Vesle by the small dam where we had gone swimming while at Lime, I found a huge limb of one of the trees bordering the road nearly blocking the way, and, just beyond, an English ambulance was drawn up beside the road with its engine torn away and two pools of blood in the empty seat. I shuddered and wondered when my turn was coming. Past the crossroads at Lime and on to the hospital I went, only to fall in behind a long line of ambulances waiting their turn to be emptied at the triage.

It should be explained that in entering the hospital from the road, one turned to the right, ran up a sharp grade for twenty yards, and, after thirty or forty yards more of level road, turned to the left, between two barracks, with a roof connecting them, where the cars were unloaded. If this description is clear, it will be noted that the triage or receiving station was invisible from the road, and might easily and rather quickly be approached without seeing those who were at the entrance.

After my car was emptied, I returned to Crouy, where, after a two hours' absence, I was unable to find the corner where I had been parked that morning. Not only had the corner building been wrecked, but the whole village looked different, so heavy had the shelling been while I was away. I finally found our French lieutenant, with some drivers of the Section. As our division had not gone into action, and we were not to be assigned any regular work until they did go into the lines, we were ordered back to a grove of trees just off the road, half way between Soissons and Crouy. There we remained all the afternoon, eighteen cars of the Section well camouflaged under the trees, and the drivers resting on the grass. Trucks full of infantry going up to the front rolled by on the road, half hidden in the choking dust; ambulances hurrying to the rear dodged in and out among them ; light artillery lumbered forward, and now and then a big gun passed to the rear, We inquired from men coming from the lines how the fight was going, but reports were contradictory.

Overhead, enemy and aUied avions were numerous, some directing artillery fire, others fighting their own battles to the end, but all of them apparently oblivious to the anti-aircraft guns that spotted the sky with puffs of white smoke. Those two or three hours that we lay there were a strain on us, although we tried not to show it. The conditions under which we had worked up to this time had been really commonplace compared to the offensive that was now in progress, and we realized when we should be assigned work within the next few hours to do it would take all the nerve we had and more too. The back area shelling was just as heavy as that directed on the front lines, and things were certainly popping all the afternoon.

"Colonel" Cain, of Missouri, and I were sitting in my car, eating an afternoon meal of canned salmon and bread, when a big shell hit the railroad station at St. Medard, north of Soissons. A minute later another hit some hundred yards closer than the first, another minute and a third hit with the same shortened range. *' Colonel" mumbled, ''Another and we shall be in direct ..." Then came a loud whistle, and the green field a hundred feet in front of us rose in a black cloud, with a terrific explosion, and the eclats whizzed past our heads clipping the leaves or burying themselves in the trunks of the trees behind us. We jumped and stretched out on the grass.

About seven o'clock the French lieutenant returned and began assigning posts. Having been the last one in the party on duty, Savoy and Bixby being still at Osly, I was last on the list, and accompanied Sergeant Kenneth A. Wood, of Buffalo, and J. D. Crary, of Brooklyn, to Missy-sur-Aisne, awaiting there in the dugout under the church any extra call that might come in.

Before leaving Lime, I had stocked my car with canned goods, tobacco, and cigarettes. That particular evening, while awaiting a call, I went out to my car and looked over the supply. Some bayonets that I had saved for souvenirs I threw away and also destroyed several letters I had written home. I was familiar with the report of how the Huns treated captured non-combatants carrying arms, and I also realized that my position was such that I could be very easily captured. But little did I realize how wise these precautions were, in view of what was to follow.

We had been at Missy less than an hour, chatting with the French hrancardiers on duty there, and drinking pinard, when Frank Conly of Brooklyn dropped in on his way down from the post at Conde, and said that another car was wanted there. I went on up. The night was dark and the white road, now deserted, was plainly visible as it stretched ahead. Half way there on my right a long barrack used as a stable was blazing brightly and lit up the road for over a mile. It was here that I met Baker. ' ' Where is the post at Conde?" I called out.

First courtyard to the right. You can't miss the gate with the high pillars," he answered; "the post is in a dugout."

The shelling had died down. The evening seemed unusually quiet when I drew up at the post. A hrancardier came up from the dugout when he heard my car and accompanied me down. There the young officer on duty informed me that there were not enough wounded to fill my car, couchez-vous pour un moment. The dugout was a spacious affair, some twenty feet underground, large enough for half a dozen cots, and well equipped for a first aid station. Presently another case was brought down. When the necessary tagging and paper work were done, the car was loaded and I was handed the billets. One stretcher case and three sitting cases.

*'Vassemy" were my orders. Back over the road toward Missy and from there to the left across the river road over the Aisne I hurried. A road could not have been more deserted at midnight even had there been no war. No lights, the trees throwing faint shadows over the road and appearing as dull shadows themselves. The road opened up smooth ahead, from an apparent nowhere ; there was no movement save that of my car, and no noise save the distant thud of shells. At Sermoise I passed an American ambulance (I was then on the Soissons-Rheims road). I stopped, and found the driver was WilHam Heckert of our Section, with a load of wounded. He had become lost in his attempt to find Vassemy. As I was going there, I told him to follow me. A few miles farther on and we swung into Vassemy, past

Captured n

some trucks that were lying inside the entrance, and on up to the triage. Ted Lockwood's car was there and soon Ted appeared with some water for one of his patients.

It was only then that we realized that the hospital had just been evacuated, and that these trucks were carrying away the last supplies. The three of us then held council, trying to decide whether to go on to Vierzy, directly to the rear, or on to Mont Notre Dame hospital, where I had been that noon and which was much nearer. We decided on the latter, as a wounded Frenchman in one of the cars asked us to hurry. Lockwood led. Just before we reached Braisne, we turned off to the right, up the steep hill which overlooks the city, thus avoiding the city itself, which was on fire, as near as we could judge. We knew that the main street was badly pitted with holes. This route was a little out of our way, but it was a matter of safety for the wounded. Coming down the hill we passed mounted troops resting beside the road, and one of their number asked to be taken into the hospital, as he was wounded in the foot. Ted picked him up. Although this road was narrow and seldom used in ordinary times, it had suffered a heavy shelling as was shown by the holes. Lime, which was just beyond, was intact, as far as we could see in the dark. At the crossroads, where we came to the road which we would have taken had we not turned off before reaching Braisne, Lockwood stopped, explaining that he had to change a spark plug and told us to go on.

It was here at the crossroads that we passed French machine gunners, lying in the shadow of the bushes bordering the road. Their guns were not set up. I passed Ted, followed by Heckert. Two miles more and we swung off the main road, up the sharp incline to the right, again to the left, and slowed up in front of the triage. It was then that I noticed the German helmets and a large number of bayonets among the crowd gathered between the two barracks. My first thought was that the French had taken some prisoners. Then, like a flash, the situation dawned on me. I was the prisoner !

Chapter II

'Tut up your hands," came a gruff command in broken English. There was no argument. I was looking into the barrel of a luger.

As I got out of my car, I turned, in the hopes of warning Lockwood and Heckert, but they were directly behind me.

As quickly as we had become the center of attention of the crowd at the triage, as quickly were we forgotten, although we were informed that if we attempted escape we would be shot.

I tried to make apologies to the wounded, as I helped them out of my car, for my having been the means of their capture. The Frenchmen were very polite, saying that it could not be helped, but from the look in their eyes I realized that for them the situation could hardly have been worse — wounded and prisoners in German hands !

I drifted among the crowd, trying to find out what had happened and how the hospital was taken. I soon learned that the hospital had been captured only about twenty minutes before, by the first German line as it advanced, and that only the guards were left there. There had been time for the personnel of the hospital to get away, but all had volunteered to remain with the wounded.

In the dark it was difficult to tell who was in the crowd in front of the triage, French doctors talked excitedly, emphasizing their words with gestures; English doctors awaited calmly for developments; French nurses, in their long dark capes, grouped silently with the doctors, and among them all were the French and English orderlies and the German guards. I accosted an Englishman, supposing that he was one of the ambulance drivers working that sector, but I soon learned that he was one of the doctors. The German guards, with their barbarian looking helmets and fixed bayonets, kept wandering among us peering insolently into our faces. The harsh German language and the broken English and French spoken with a guttural accent jarred on our ears. In the succeeding months French became more like our own native tongue, while the German language always remained foreign.

We had thought of escape, and wandered away from the crowd, only to be followed by a guard and motioned back. There was no use to go any farther, for we learned that some Italians had been shot while attempting to get away. Moreover, there was work to be done right there among our own wounded.

Earlier in the day a hospital train had been expected. Had it arrived the hospital would have been evacuated before it was captured. In preparation for this train many of the wounded had been taken from the wards down to the station or placed in rows on their stretchers outside the wards. It was now necessary to get these poor fellows back to bed. We began taking them into the wards. I worked with Mile. Bedts, a French nurse, who proved to be, as did the other nurses, most heroic, patient, and faithful to duty in the following two months at the hospital. We began with those who were most seriously wounded, leaving those who were sleeping until the last. By four in the morning we had gotten them all to bed. I can see even now as I write, the senior nurse tiptoeing down the aisle of the ward with her dark lantern, rearranging a blanket here and there, or whispering a word of cheer to one of the patients who had not fallen asleep. What a disappointing surprise the next morning for those wounded who had slept through the whole evening and who would wake up to find themselves behind the German lines.

Among all of the wounded there was only one American, an ambulance driver of S. S. U. 646, Harry K. James, who had been wounded by a bomb the previous day.

Following the instructions of Mile Bedts, Lockwood, Heckert, and I found beds in a half -filled ward. It took us but a minute to get to sleep once we were in bed.

Never in my life do I wish to awaken with such a hopeless feeling as I did the next morning, when I opened my eyes at eight o'clock. Outside, anti-aircraft shrapnel was bursting overhead and I could hear the drone of the propellers. But that was nothing. *'A prisoner in German hands" ran through my head over and over again. No communication with those on our side of the Hne, no news from home, and a very doubtful future, if all reports were to be believed. It was not so much what it meant to me personally, but the report of my being missing would be known to those at home.

Someone was moving in the ward, then I heard whispering in Italian. I changed my gaze from the whitewashed ceiling to the length of the aisle. An Italian hobbled in, his foot limp and bleeding. Excitedly he explained that he had tried to escape and was shot. Other patients began to search among their clothes for letters and orders, which were thrown into the stove. In the next few days the process of destroying printed matter that might be useful to the enemy was a common scene.

We dressed, and shortly Mile. Bedts came in with a cheerful smile and asked how we had slept.

Mile. Bedts was rather large, not typically French in stature, though well proportioned and straight; and, as we learned later, stronger than most men. She chatted with us a few minutes, talking heatedly against the Germans, yet hopeful concerning the whole affair. Reminding us that it would be best to destroy all written and printed matter we had with us she offered to take care of any valuables we had lest we were searched and lose them. I gave her my watch.

We offered our services for anything that would be of help to her. She accepted and led the way, going through the barracks as much as possible and avoiding open spaces and the German guards. In an officer's ward she gave us breakfast, coffee and bread.

Then we began work. Two officers had died during the night and their bodies had to be taken to the morgue. We put them on stretchers. Mile. Bedts and I took the first stretcher, and Lockwood and Heckert the other. My respect and admiration for Mile. Bedts was established that morning, when she showed so much courage and coolness in the following incident :

The morgue lay some three hundred yards from the wards proper, among a group of buildings which comprised a carpenter shop, a laundry, and a sterilizing plant. As we approached the morgue, a shell whistled in and hit a lumber pile just behind the morgue, about fifty yards from us. Mile. Bedts kept on, with the cheerful remark: ''Come on, no need of stopping for that." It seemed foolhardy to go on, but if she showed no fear, it was certainly not my place to object, and she continued coolly on. Another shell came whining in and exploded much nearer. Mile. Bedts proceeded without a word. Still another shell ! This time we were within thirty feet of the morgue. Mile. Bedts lowered her end of the stretcher and laughingly exclaimed: ''We better lie down!" We did, and just in time. The eclat whizzed over our heads as the explosion tore the air. "Allons! Let us get these in before the next shell hits," she exclaimed. We hurried on, fumbling with the latch, and finally laid the bodies inside. As we ran from the morgue another shell came in, digging up the ground between the morgue and the carpenter shop.

We went back to the officers' ward and removed the rest of the patients over to the ward of which Mile. Bedts had direct charge, Salle 3. Lockwood, who spoke French fluently, remained there, and became Mile. Bedts's right-hand man.

Heckert and I, having nothing to do, wandered out, trying to get a little of the lay of the camp, and to see what had happened to the cars. We found them where we had left them on the previous night. The things we had in them we took out. Tobacco, cigarettes, a few cans of food, a blanket roll, and our packs. It was then that we noticed the cars had been tampered with, and we finished the job of ruining them for further use by the Huns. The last that I saw of them was several weeks later, when one of them passed on a Red Cross truck, bound for the rear. My sincere hope is that the cars were beyond repair, at least with the wiring pulled out, and a monkeywrench in the gears, and the tires cut, they would cause some mechanic a lot of work.

That noon we accepted Mile. Bedts's kind invitation for dinner with the nurses in their quarters. There were about twenty in the party, so that we three Americans were decidedly outnumbered. But that made no difference, for our hostesses were delightful and the dinner delicious, especially as it was the first hot meal we had had for two days. The atmosphere of their quarters was restful and homelike. The only interruption to the meal was by a boche avion, who used his machine gun on the hospital rather promiscuously, and then ended the performance by dropping a small bomb just outside, between two of the wards near by. All remained at the table, except one nurse, who went to her room and returned with a helmet on. The nurses took the situation coolly, merely scolding roundly the impudence of the boche.

Later, another boche avion came over, flying low and using his machine gun on the hospital. Heckert and I at the time were under a large oak tree, in the small plaza in the center of the hospital grounds, and we moved behind this, keeping one behind the other, always opposite the boche.

What object the aviator had in using us as a target, when we were already prisoners, was more than I could judge. Perhaps it was the German idea of sport.

That afternoon we found an empty barrack vacated by the officers, and tried to catch up in our sleep. This barrack became our sleeping quarters for several nights until we decided that it might be safer to move. Allied shells had been hitting in that vicinity.

During those first few days, the Germans had placed a battery of guns just outside the hospital grounds, among a group of trees, on the western side. This battery was the cause, in my opinion, of the occasional shells that hit within the hospital grounds. The Allies, in trying to locate this battery, could not help but drop a few shells short, and these fell dangerously near the wards.