He and Sammy crossed the Channel to Ostend and traveled on to Brussels with no difficulty. On the way they saw elements of King Albert’s Belgian army mobilizing. The Belgians were brave but poorly equipped. Paul filmed a company of machine gunners drilling; the guns were pulled by large dogs. He shot fifty feet and then a Belgian officer threatened to smash the camera unless he moved on.
In Brussels, the American ambassador, Whitlock, arranged for a laissez-passer, an official document allowing unrestricted travel. That and their passports insured Paul and Sammy’s safety. Supposedly.
In a café in the Boulevard Waterloo, Paul ran into an old colleague, Richard Harding Davis, on the scene with many other correspondents. Paul said he intended to film the German advance.
“I don’t know how they’ll take to it,” Dick Davis said. “Show a camera to any army officer in the world, and he thinks one thing. Spy.” Paul nodded, remembering the machine gun company. Davis pulled a pencil from the breast pocket of his smart linen coat.
“For once I’m happy to be an old-fashioned reporter.” He waggled the pencil. “You be careful, my friend.”
Tall poplars lined both sides of the road, like green, leafy banks of a river. In the riverbed flowed an unending tide of human misery. Refugees by the hundreds, stretching to the horizon in both directions.
Paul set up his camera facing the oncoming throngs. A few people stared, but no one asked a question or called a greeting. Fear showed on every face. Paul started to crank. Sammy said, “Gor, what a sight.”
Truly it was; the river carried men, women, and children on foot, riding bicycles with backpacks, driving old market wagons piled high. A grandmother dragged a dog cart without a dog to pull it. The cart held a small mountain of clothes, cook pots—the residue of a shattered life.
A black Daimler crept by, trunks and suitcases swaying on its roof. Anxious white faces peered out. A young girl passed with a flour sack that clanked with the family silver. A farm couple struggled with wooden cages of quacking ducklings and squealing piglets. A sweaty aristocrat in an Alfa Romeo nearly ran down a mother with two infants in her arms. He screamed oaths as he drove past.
An old man with the look of a scholar appeared, half a dozen books secured by a strap slung over his shoulder. Paul shouted, “How many Germans in Liège?”
“Von Bülow’s whole Second Army. Stealing everything from paintings to postcards, the bastards.”
The river of terror flowed on for several hours, then thinned, then dried up altogether. Paul suspected that the German advance was close behind. He filmed intermittently, but the stricken faces, the pathetic bundles of goods, grew repetitive. He and Sammy were sweating and filthy with dust. Two emotions mingled in him—sadness and anger.
He rested in the shade of a poplar, smoking a cigar. Sammy relieved himself against a bush. In surrounding fields bundles of grain lay waiting for harvesters who would never come. A silver shape floated into sight.
“Zeppelin,” Paul cried, jumping up. Away to his left a massive dust cloud roiled in the sky. “Here they come.”
Paul drove the old cart horse as fast as he dared toward the village. Twenty minutes after they arrived, the first Germans marched in, making a fearsome noise as their iron-shod boots hit the cobbles in cadence. They goose-stepped, young boys in neat gray-green uniforms, smiling and confident. Only the villagers were sullen. Paul and Sammy stood among them in the square, stared at but not disturbed. Paul had hidden the camera, fearing confiscation.
A caravan of motor transports passed through, then a detachment of Uhlans riding matched horses. Pennons fluttered on their lances. A woman ran out to greet them, offering yellow flowers. From the crowd someone threw a rock. The smile of the Uhlan officer became a glare.
Infantry with supporting units of cavalry and artillery passed through for over an hour. Occasionally an open staff car drove alongside the column, honking its way through the square before roaring on. Paul’s legs and back ached, the effect of sleeping badly and standing for hours, nerves screwed tight. He felt his thirty-six years; he was no longer young.
Another staff car pulled into the square. This one stopped. A colonel stepped down, dusty but otherwise perfectly attired. His pink face shone as he took off his cap. He had red hair, neatly barbered. He shouted for the burgomaster, first in German, then bad French.
“Here, your honor.” A plump man scuttled forward, seized the colonel’s hand. For a moment Paul thought he was going to kiss the officer’s signet ring. People muttered.
The officer began to snap orders at the burgomaster, gesturing, commandeering billets and food. A roughly dressed boy of ten or so ran from the crowd. The boy had a gun carved out of wood. Before his mother could snatch him back, he aimed at the officer and made shooting noises.
The startled officer frowned. In German he said to his aide, “We’ll have none of that. They must show respect. Get rid of him.”
“At once, Colonel.”
The aide strode toward the boy, unlimbering his service pistol. The boy turned the wooden gun on him, banging away. The boy’s mother ran toward him, arms stretched out, screaming. She was still five or six steps away when the aide calmly shot the boy through the head.
Blood and brains splattered the cobbles. The boy twisted and went down like a cloth doll that had lost its stuffing. The aide blew into the muzzle, put his piece away, and gave his superior a smart little salute. The officer nodded crisply. The burgomaster’s trousers showed a wet stain. Paul could hardly breathe. Sammy whispered in a trembling voice, “Jesus fucking Christ.”
The mother dropped to her knees beside the boy. Flies were settling in the spilled blood. A few villagers with sticks and rocks edged forward, but a wave of the colonel’s hand brought out the pistols of three other men in the staff car. Swaying back and forth, the mother keened, “Dieu, Dieu. Fusillé par les Allemands.” God, God. Shot by the Germans.
The Germans advanced through the village until the light of the long summer evening faded. Paul was staggered by their numbers, the splendid state of their equipment, all the support units: horse-drawn kitchen wagons with smoking chimneys, hospital wagons, an open truck in which cobblers hammered away resoling boots, even a motorized post office. As the night came down they encamped, singing drinking songs and “Die Wacht am Rhein” in lusty voices. Paul approached a youthful infantry corporal writing a postcard and asked him how long the war would last.
“We’ll be in Paris by Christmas. Home right after the New Year.”
Paul and Sammy left the village in the middle of the night, driving the milk cart with the camera and film magazines still hidden.
Smoke clouds stained the horizons of Belgium. Where the Germans found resistance, they burned houses in retaliation.
Paul and Sammy drove through fields torn up by the iron wheels of caissons. They saw blue cottages with red-tiled roofs, all the windows smashed, doors ripped off the hinges. They saw trampled gardens of hollyhocks, others in which a few red cabbages lay like crushed human heads. Paul filmed where he could, but the wooden Moy was bulky, easily spotted. They stayed off main roads to avoid confrontations in which their papers might be examined, questioned, even taken away.
Near another village they came upon soldiers working with horses and chains to drag tree trunks from a road. Fallen trees weren’t the only roadblocks put up by the Belgians. A little farther on, flames licked around the gutted frame of an auto lying on its side.
Paul and Sammy hid the cart and approached the village on foot. Paul carried the camera, sans tripod, wrapped in a blanket under his arm. Sammy had an extra magazine.
As they passed a barn and started to cross a fallow field at the edge of the village, Sammy jerked Paul’s arm. “Got to hide, gov.” They ran into the barn and breathlessly climbed to the hayloft. From there Paul watched a squad of soldiers march three men and three women of varying ages into the sunlit field. A young captain strutted in front of the civilians, all of whom had their wrists tied behi
nd them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain said in a loud voice, “you have placed obstacles in the path of General von Kluck’s First Army. I refer to the fallen trees, the burned Panhard auto.” He spoke excellent French.
“That kind of resistance can’t be tolerated, I trust you appreciate that. We have our orders. Do you have anything to say before we carry them out?”
One man spat on the ground. A young woman fell to her knees, weeping. “Spare me the theatrics,” the captain said. “You can at least take your medicine bravely.”
Paul shoved the camera forward into the hayloft opening, checked the exposure, lined up to be sure his frame included both Germans and Belgians. He cranked, wincing at the racheting noise. Could they hear it in the silence? There was nothing else but the twitter of birds and motors revving on a distant road.
The captain tapped a cigarette on a metal case. “Sergeant, execute them.”
The sergeant snapped orders. The soldiers raised their rifles. “No, no, not like that,” the captain said. “We want a stronger lesson. Bayonets.”
The kneeling woman fell over in a faint. A middle-aged farmer in boots and smock put his arm around his wife. The soldiers looked at one another, hesitant. “Schnell, schnell,” the irritated captain cried, waving his cigarette.
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Fix bayonets.”
Paul kept cranking as the soldiers marched forward and rammed their steel into the civilians. They pulled the bayonets out and kept stabbing until each Belgian was certifiably dead.
“Leave them,” the captain said when all of them had fallen. His cigarette was down to a stub. As he started to toss it away, he happened to glance at the barn. There must have been a flare off the lens; the officer pointed.
“Up there. I saw something. Surround the barn.”
“Come on, gov.” Sammy dove for the ladder.
“Give me the other magazine.”
“Gov, there’s no time—”
“The other magazine, God damn it.”
Round-eyed with fright, Sammy obeyed. Hurrying, Paul removed the magazine with the exposed footage, locked the other magazine on. He had no time to open the camera and thread the leader. He buried the exposed magazine under straw just as soldiers kicked the barn doors open.
“You keep quiet, not a word,” he whispered to Sammy. “Whatever you do, don’t show that British passport.”
Rifle bolts rattled down below. Paul shouted in German, “Don’t fire, we’re Americans. American citizens.”
“Climb down, hands in the air.” That was the captain.
Paul went first. The captain couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He had a soft baby face, mild blue eyes. A map was neatly folded over his belt. An electric torch stuck from a pocket of his blouse. All the German officers carried a map with roads and key locations marked, plus a torch for night duty.
The officer clicked his heels. “Captain Herman Kinder. You speak German.”
“I emigrated from Berlin as a boy.”
“Ah, ein Landsmann. Have you papers?”
“Yes.” Paul pulled them from under his smock. The captain unfolded the oversized parchment signed by Secretary of State Bryan and inscribed with pertinent details of Paul’s age, build, approximate weight, eye and hair color, all filled in by some scribe with a beautiful hand. The captain turned the passport this way and that, studying it for an agonizing length of time.
Finally he handed it back. He next examined Paul’s laissez-passer. “For your information the Belgians no longer control this country. Brussels fell on Friday. This document is worthless.” He tore it in half and threw the pieces on the ground. He eyed the ladder. Sammy had stopped halfway down, one arm hooked over a rung. His face was pale, tense.
“What do you have up there? I saw a reflection, sunlight on a spyglass or similar.”
“I have a news camera up there,” Paul said. “I take pictures for theaters.”
“Kino.” The captain smiled briefly. “Bring it down,” he said to Sammy.
Sammy didn’t understand the German. Paul repeated the order in English. Sammy started to speak. Paul stared at him. Sammy gulped and scuttled up the ladder.
He lowered the camera to a soldier, then climbed down. Captain Kinder walked around the camera resting on the ground.
“You have pictures of what transpired in the field?” Paul nodded. To one of his men, Kinder said, “Destroy it.” A soldier bore the camera out of the barn, and out of sight. Paul winced at the sound of the wooden case splintering.
“Since Germany and the United States are not belligerents, I am obliged to treat you courteously. But I advise you to leave the district at once. In the hands of a less conscientious officer you might be subject to execution without a hearing.”
“I understand.”
“If you’re seen around here again, you will be summarily shot.”
“Yes, right, we’ll go.” Paul dug his nails into his palms. They were almost free, almost out of the trap.
Remembering the film hidden in the loft, he signaled Sammy with a look. The two of them walked to the sunlit doorway and out. Sammy looked ready to burst with anger. Carefully, Paul laid a finger across his lips, keeping his back to the barn. He walked quickly, without running. Any moment he expected a bullet in the back. At the edge of his vision he saw black birds with leathery wings feeding on the red flesh of the dead.
When they reached the far edge of the field, Paul risked a glance over his shoulder. Captain Kinder and his men were marching away toward the village.
He pressed on, toward a low fence of stones some farmer had built. There, quietly he said, “It’s all right, Sammy, they’re gone.”
He’d never seen Sammy’s face so ugly. Sammy kicked the stone wall. “Fucking bloody bastards. Fucking savages.”
“Huns. That’s the name I heard in the village.” Sammy’s expression was blank. “Like Attila’s hordes.” It still didn’t register. He gave up, rested both hands on the stone fence and bent his head, sickened by the killings.
“It’s lucky they didn’t hear you say anything or I imagine we’d be dead.”
“I’m one who follows orders, ain’t I?” Sammy snarled, still visibly upset.
“You are, Sammy. You’re that and much, much more. God bless you. Let’s sit down and rest.”
Sammy sat next to him, fanning himself with his beret. “Where next, gov?”
“We’ll make a run for Ostend and the Channel. I’ll pay some fisherman to carry us across.” They sat silent until Paul said, “I think it’s safe now. We can go back for the film.”
“You stay here, I’ll fetch it. Got to make sure those pictures get home, so people know what kind of fucking bloody monsters we’re fighting.”
Paul was about to argue, but the ferocity in Sammy’s eyes kept him quiet.
69. Troubled House
Old age had carried off the well-remembered Nicky Speers, chauffeur to the Crowns for so many years. According to Ilsa’s letters, the General said no one could ever equal Nicky for efficiency and good humor, so he’d chosen not to replace him. Fritzi was met at the Chicago depot by the close-mouthed Bavarian steward, Leopold, who was waiting on the platform.
“Welcome home, fraülein.”
“Thank you, Leopold, I’m glad to be here.”
“Your mother and father will be happy to see you.” In speaking ten words, Leopold was being loquacious. Plus, Fritzi suspected only half of his remark was true.
The sky above the noisy street was yellow and smoky. A rampart of black clouds in the west threatened rain. It was Thursday, October 1, three days before “Peace Sunday” proclaimed by the president as a national day of prayer to end the war.
With special dispensation from B.B., she had come halfway across the country at her mother’s urging. On her journey she’d listened to fellow passengers with strong opinions about the war: The U.S. must follow Wilson’s lead and remain completely neutral. The Germans were barbarian
s guilty of raping nuns, burning priests alive, amputating the hands of Belgian babies. Never mind, the whole thing would be over by Christmas. Fritzi had no strong opinions of her own at this point, and the war had nothing to do with her return to Chicago. She was here to celebrate her parents’ forty-fifth wedding anniversary at a lavish party at the Palmer House. Guests at the annual affair included many of the General’s senior employees, business associates, and friends from their years in German-American society in Chicago. After some hesitation, Fritzi had decided to venture home, hoping that the festive atmosphere would help her heal the rift with her father.
The family’s maroon Benz touring car delivered her to the mansion at dusk. The servants were all new, unfamiliar. Her mother was still at a church committee meeting, she learned, and the General was away in St. Louis. He’d gone there to straighten out a problem at his distribution agency and would return late tomorrow.
Her old room on the second floor had a stale, disused air despite clean, starched sheets and a vase of flowers. Unpacking, she turned suddenly, sensing someone in the doorway.
“Joey!”
“Hello, sis.” He limped across the carpet; they hugged. Joe Junior tossed his old cloth cap on a chair. Approaching forty, he was pasty and smelled strongly of whiskey. His waist was much thicker than she remembered. Joey hung on to his job despite his socialist disdain for capitalism. Mama said sadly that he traded his principles for drinking money.
“Nice California tan you’ve got, sis.”
“Thank you, kind sir. You could use a little sunshine yourself.”
“Ah, who’d notice? I saw your new flicker, the one where you break everything. Funny.”
“I’m glad you liked it. Tell me, how are you?”
“How should I be? I’m the same. Go to the brewery six days a week, work at party headquarters on Sunday.”
Fritzi didn’t like the tone of self-pity, but she didn’t say anything. She sat on the bed. “Has the war had any impact in Chicago? Out West people hardly know it’s happening.”