BRITISH MARCH INTO GERMANY.

ACROSS THE FRONTIER. SCENES IN MALMEDY.

From Philip Gibbs. Malmedy (Germany), Sunday.

At nine o’clock-this morning our troops crossed the Belgian frontier and entered Germany. I went with our leading patrol of cavalry over the little stone bridge across the Rothwasser brook, and through the town of Malmedy, a few miles within German territory. It was a hard morning, with a cold fog on the hill-tops and all the fir trees and red bracken on the hillsides, and down the steep ravines were covered with white frost like the scenery of German Christmas cards. Our cavalry and horse artillery, with their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the frontier before the bugles sounded for the forward march, were standing by their horses, clapping their hands and beating their chests and stamping their feet to get a little physical heat. The men wore their steel helmets as though for an advance in the usual conditions of warfare, and the troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with drawn swords. The young cavalry officer commanding the first group of Dragoon Guards seemed a little nervous of his responsibility of being the first to ride into Germany, and swore that he did not know a word of the blessed language, and could not pronounce a single blessed name, so that it would be no fault of his if he took the wrong turning. But the road was fairly simple to Malmedy, except for a hairpin turn some way outside the town, and the patrol went forward at the trot through the pine woods and the fir forests along the edge of the ravines, where the German Santa Claus seems to grow all his Christmas trees. There was a beat of horses’ hoofs on the frozen roads, and the cavalry swords gleamed ahead of us as we followed the leading troop.

There were no longer double sentries on the bridge across the Red Water Brook, and the gate of Germany was wide open, and we went into the silent countryside which yesterday we had seen from the Belgian end of the bridge. It was very silent, and the first farmhouses we passed and the cottages under the shelter of the woods seemed quite abandoned. There were no flags hung out from them, like those millions of flags which have fluttered along all the miles of our way through Belgium. Now and again, looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw a face there, but it was withdrawn quickly as I turned. A dog came out and barked at us as we passed, and a man with a sense of humour said: “That is the first sign of hostility.” Nearer to Malmedy little groups of people appeared, as though they had taken a Sunday morning walk, and were not expecting the entry of British troops. Some of them just glanced our way and then looked ahead as though they had no interest in us. Others lifted their hats gravely and passed on. Here and there some small children, watching from cottage windows or in their mothers’ arms, waved their hands with the friendliness of childhood for all men on horses, and they were not rebuked. German schoolboys in peaked caps, with their hands thrust in their pockets, stared, without friendliness or unfriendliness; some girls on a hillside above a winding road laughed and waved their handkerchiefs. There was no sense as yet of passing through a hostile country where we were not wanted

ARRIVAL AT MALMEDY.

Round the hairpin turn we came down into Malmedy, lying in a narrow valley, with some of its streets and houses climbing up the hillsides. It was a typical little German town, with here and there houses of the châlet style, and other houses of the modern country type in Germany, with wooden balconies and low-pitched roofs, and beyond very neat and clean-looking factories off the outskirts of the town. The shops were bright, and I saw displays of wooden soldiers and flaxenhaired dolls and toy engines, as though for the German Christmas winch is coming, and in one little garden there was the figure of a little old gnome like Rumpelstiltskin in my old copy of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” German notices and German signboards were at every turn in the street, where there were many people going to church, well-dressed men and women, long-legged schoolgirls with flaxen pigtails, and boys with peaked caps. A typical German town, one might think. Yet when we stood in the square and watched the rest of the cavalry pass through, Dragoons with drawn swords, and Lancers with their coloured pennons – it was surprising to hear that most of the people about one were speaking French. Some of us remembered then that Malmedy was not in Germany until after 1815. and that for a long time it was an independent little town belonging to a Belgian abbey. The people here were not typically German, and many of them at least had the neutral spirit of folk who live close to the frontier and speak two languages, or three, as at Malmedy, where everyone is equally familiar with German, French, and Walloon. Some of the people in the crowds spoke to me in good French, and were very polite, expressing their admiration of the “chic” appearance of our cavalry, and their astonishment at the beautiful look of the horses. “After four and a half years of war it is wonderful,” they said. I bought a newspaper in a- bookshop, and found it was La Semaine printed in French. Yet all its news was German and of German sympathy.

A German officer and unteroffizier, left to look after prisoners, saluted us, and among those in the crowds were men who had been discharged from the German army on account of wounds. One who spoke to me had been in Russia, where he was badly wounded in the foot. I went into an inn to get some coffee, and the innkeeper and his wife, speaking in French, expressed their joy that the fighting was over. In Malmedy there was no sign whatever of hostility. except a sullen look on the faces of some men who stared through the windows of a clubhouse. In many of the windows was a notice in German which I read. It was an appeal by the Burgomaster Kalpers: “Citizens are earnestly requested to maintain the greatest calm and order on the entry of the Entente troops into our city and to receive them with courtesy and dignity.” That wish was being carried out.

ATTITUDE OF THE PEOPLE.

Later in the day I went to another town in Germany near the Belgian frontier. It was Eupen, and here at once one saw a different character from that of Malmedy. There were no Walloons here, but purely German people who spoke French. They, too, were polite and maintained a quiet dignity but did not express any interest whatever in the appearance of the British troops. An innkeeper told me in German that some of our cavalry and artillery had passed through before I came. When I asked about the food supplies in Eupen he said, “They are short and we have little to eat.” He was a gloomy man, and the tragedy of his country seemed to weigh upon him.

So we have entered this new phase in the history of the war; and henceforth there will be no flags on our way and no cheering crowds, and at the best only that “Höflichkeit und Würde,” that courtesy and dignity, which we expect.