Boche and Bolshevik: Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian PrisonsPrice, Hereward Thimbleby
History
Boche and Bolshevik: Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian Prisons
Price, Hereward Thimbleby
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Russian
I may add two stories of how real spies were detected--and this owing
to the neglect of the merest trifle. The bridge over the Rhine at
Bonn is very carefully watched, and every vehicle must be accompanied
across by a soldier. A motor-car was once being thus conveyed, with
two officers in it, when something unfamiliar about them attracted the
attention of the guard. He looked at them more closely, and discovered
that with the uniform of the artillery they were wearing the spiked
helmets of the infantry. (Artillery helmets end in a ball.) He had the
car stopped, and it transpired that the two men were officers in the
French Army on a special mission to the interior of Germany. They were
tried and shot the same day.
The other instance is of an oversight equally trivial. A lady was
travelling in the train from Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne, when her
attention was caught by the label of a London tailor sewn in another
lady’s jacket which was dangling from the rack. The owner of the jacket
was continually running into the next compartment to have a talk with
a wounded officer, whose arm was in a sling. “She was like a nervous
rabbit,” my informant said. When the train pulled up in Cologne station
a detachment of soldiers was waiting on the platform, and they at once
arrested the wounded officer. He was an English spy, and his bandages
were full of maps and other incriminating documents. (The names of all
persons in uniform who board a train are registered, and by the time
they reach their destination it is known whether they are _bona fide_
travellers or not. A telegram does the rest.) It was obvious that the
wearer of the English jacket was also a spy working together with the
man who had been arrested. At first the German lady could not bring
herself to give information which must inevitably cost the life of a
woman. She hesitated a long time, but in the end duty to the Vaterland
prevailed, and she told the authorities. Meanwhile, however, the
Englishwoman had left the station and was speeding away in a taxi. But
the soldiers rushed out and sounded a peculiar signal, at which every
vehicle within hearing is bound to stop and wait further orders. The
Englishwoman had not got far enough away, she was arrested, and she, no
doubt, suffered the extreme penalty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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