Behind the Scenes in Warring GermanyFox, Edward Lyell
History
Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany
Fox, Edward Lyell
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Modestly the doctor spoke of his room, but to our surprise he stopped in
front of one of the few imposing-looking houses in Gleiwitz. It was one
of those venerable places which makes you think that the man who lives
there must about own the other inhabitants body and soul. Occupying
about four hundred feet, corner frontage, towering amid symmetrical
lawns and flower beds, guarded by a ten-foot iron fence, the
old-fashioned house stood back like a castle.
"Nothing like it," said the doctor with a smile. "It belongs to one of
the richest men in Silesia. He's at the front, in France. He's a
captain, by the way, just won the Iron Cross. His wife is in Berlin for
the winter, so we're here, Spearmin, Stem and myself, with ten servants
to wait on us, and the best of everything for the asking. Not bad, eh?"
While we were listening to a baseball story of the doctor's, we took in
the luxurious appointments of his room. Then you thought of the
makeshift hospital and how topsy-turvy war turns everything. From his
valise, the doctor produced a Russian bayonet, hat and cartridge belt.
"They cost me two marks," he said, "for the whole outfit. I bought them
from the driver of an Austrian ammunition wagon. Have a cartridge?" and
he passed the belt as one might pass a box of candy. They were
ugly-looking bullets, not as pointed as the Germans'. The bayonet also
was uglier, curved like an old-fashioned saber.
"It's no good alongside the German bayonet, though," explained Dr.
Sanders; "that's longer and straighter. You ought to hear how some of
the wounded over at the hospital talk about their bayonets. One fellow
was telling me the other day that he had ripped it through the stomachs
of three Russians." And even the doctor, hardened to such things, made a
grimace.
After a luncheon, where, like the father of a large family, the doctor
sat at the head of a long table with his nurses and assistants around
him, everybody asking if the Christmas mail from the States had come, we
returned to the hospital. We found great excitement. Two officers had
been there, the orderly explaining that one was the sanitation commander
of all hospitals at Gleiwitz, and that the other was Captain Hoffman of
the garrison. What did they want? The orderly didn't know, but it must
have been something very important, for they had told him to say to Dr.
Sanders that they would return in half an hour, and for him please to be
there, whereupon the orderly, to my amazement, looked at me a little
suspiciously; indeed, his eyes followed me into the lobby.
"What's the matter with that chap?" I asked the doctor.
"Oh, he's spy crazy," replied Dr. Sanders; "you see, they caught two
Russians here the other day, and the captain he speaks of presided at
the trial. They put the spies up against the wall of that old barn over
there. We could hear the shooting."
The doctor's tone was so casual that you concluded spy-killing to be
commonplace at Gleiwitz.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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