In reconquered territory
Here are some fascinating extracts from the Echo dated November 15, which was the first issue to come out after news of the armistice
IN 1911 Arthur Deakin, son of Echo founder Joseph Deakin, went to work in a newspaper office in Germany, later broadening his knowledge of printing at a technical college in Leipzig.
He returned home shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and joined the Royal Fusiliers.
He saw services in the trenches in France and Belgium and took part in the Battle of the Somme.
After the news of the Armistice he wrote home to the Echo, which published his account on November 15th, 1918 - the first issue after peace was declared. IN RECONQUERED TERRITORY.
It produces at first quite a feeling of exultation to ride through a district newly evacuated by the Hun.
There is a sense of novelty which, provided the weather is not too disagreeable and the roads are passable, increases with every mile.
Of course, in crossing that tortured belt of country where the battle has raged for so long, the roads are unspeakably bad and weighted motor lorries have need of every spring they possess.
This belt of desolation once passed, however, the outlook becomes better and one emerges on to broad highways where the hand of war is less marked.
Notice boards in Ger- man catch the eye at every turn, and khaki-clad men puzzle in vain over their hidden meaning. The Boche blowing-up brigades have done their work well, and many are the beautiful bridges over can and under railway which lie a shapeless mass of twisted iron.
This is legitimate warfare, however, and is to be expected in a retreat. But it hinders us. We must make a circuit and cross some miles lower down where the Engineers have put up a temporary bridge.
In any case we cannot cross before morning.
I spend that night in what was once a bedroom of a chateau. I think it is a bedroom because it is one of three rooms which still remain on the first floor.
The remainder have sort of slipped sideways and now fill the rooms below in place of the furniture which the Boche has stolen away. It is strange how these three rooms still hold together.
They are approached by the main stairway leading up from the entrance hall. I know it was an entrance hall because it lies opposite the front door, and I know it was a staircase because the layer of bricks, mortar, plaster, and laths at this point slope upwards. Of stairs, however, I see nothing.
In the bedroom is a wide bed with a beautifully springy mattress. I test it with my hand and peer below to make sure that no “hell machines,” as the Boche calls them, are concealed there.
Several paintings are still hanging crazily from the walls, and in the principle a maidenhead fern is suspended from the ceiling. I block up the nearest window with a sack, bring up the bedroom door from the hall into which it has been thrown, and lose myself in the spring mattress. And I sleep very well, too!
During the evening I have crossed the canal by a plank bridge and explored to my satisfaction the town lying just beyond it. Both sides of the canal for several feet under water are lined with barbed wire.
I walk over many yards of trip wire stretched across the towing path until I reach the point where No. 2 bridge lies in a huge V shape with its middle submerged in water.
Further on the road is flooded, so I turn off to the right where one of the first houses of the town is still on fire. It is a clear moonlight night, and I can see the street ahead of me lined with houses on either side. Yet not a soul is in sight, neither soldier nor civilian. Not a dog barks. The whole town is deserted, stricken.
The air is still, the silence becomes almost oppressive, and I begin to whistle to keep myself company. Many house doors are open, and through the gloom I can see the state of chaos which exists within. Otherwise the houses are bit badly knocked about, except in the neighbourhood of bridges that have been blown up.
Evidently, this is no place in which to seek my supper.
Next morning we are early away through a flat country intersected by straight pave roads lined with poplar trees.
One would have thought that the Boche, thinking to keep for all time the land he had conquered, would have put the same to the plough and reaped the benefit. But this was not the case here. For miles on both sides the road nothing but coarse grass presented itself.
Certainly, for four years the plough had not turned that soil. The evacuation, however, had been well carried out.
All telegraph wires were out and the posts in many cases chopped down.
Only dumps of metal material and such like heavy stuff remained behind. Railway lines were cut and hopelessly hacked about, and the villages through which we passed presented little but a shattered skeleton of what a few days ago had been passable habitations. In this respect much wanton destruction had been done.
The village in which we eventually pulled up provided ample illustration. It was a fair-sized village but not a single house in it remained undamaged.
In some of the rooms, in most unlikely places, were
unexploded large-calibre shells, four feet high, perhaps, standing upright on their bases.
Much harm, no doubt, had been done by our own gun-fire, but how does one account for the hopeless state of disorder which prevailed everywhere?
In every house I visited (and I visited many) a scene of absolute confu-
sion met my eyes. The rooms were stripped of everything of value which it had been possible to take away.
A large sign over a doorway in the main street bearing the word “Beutestelle,” that is “Collecting Station for Loot,” gave evidence of this of this.
Filth and dust, broken furniture and household utensils lay in every direction.
Upstairs, bedsteads were rendered unusable, and clothing and hats lay about the floor.
Books with coloured plates, lamps, and broken mirrors and pictures were among the rest.
In one farmyard, standing upright on its four legs in the very centre of the midden, was an upholstered armchair! Surely, speaking of animals, only swine could revel in such chaos, speaking of human beings, none but Huns.
When the poor civilians return to their homes it will break their hearts.
I spoke to a German officer, a prisoner, on this subject and asked him how it was such things were allowed.
He shrugged his shoulders by way of answer, “It is forbidden, really, but some soldiers are so childish, you know!”