True Stories of the Great War, Volume 4 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 4 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Toward evening I wended my way from the prison yards to the depot,
about a half mile, walking slowly over the sandy tract. When I arrived
at the station I was surprised to find that Miss Bross was among the
passengers who were waiting to return to the city.
Miss Bross had reached the place by a different train than the one by
which I came. She had been busy in the sunlight, she said, enjoying the
open sky and the warm, autumnal breezes.
To me her mission to Döberitz appeared very different. It seemed that
she had no interest in the prison camp, that to her the sanitation and
employment of prisoners was a blank book, but everything I mentioned
about the drill of soldiers and the maneuvers of flying machines
aroused her interest. To the one she was blind and to the others she
was wide awake and far-seeing. The difference in her feeling on these
topics deepened my suspicion that she was practicing a clever game of
espionage.
I had taken a seat beside her on a bench in the railway station and
began to study her face. She was alert and cunning, but her attitude
was vague and evasive.
When the express train rolled into the station, I was ready to board
it without delay. The evening was pleasant and the train moved rapidly
toward the metropolis. Miss Bross alighted at Potsdamer Platz, while I
went as far as Friedrich Strasse.
Several times I met Miss Bross at the reading rooms of the _Chicago
Daily News_, where she observed the news columns and editorials of the
German-American newspapers with special interest. Near the last of
November she told me she had decided to go home to Denmark on the third
of December. By this time I had purchased passage to New York and left
for Copenhagen the same morning.
After luncheon on the railway diner, Miss Bross seemed worried about
the examination at Warnemünde, where German officers inspected the
baggage and person of the passengers. This examination, owing to much
espionage, had been greatly intensified.
"What do you think of the case of Miss Edith Cavell?" she asked, "I
mean the nurse who was executed as a spy in Belgium by the Germans."
"This case," I answered, "is an unusual one. Miss Cavell had the utmost
confidence of the German officers, who granted her extraordinary
privileges as a nurse, while she busied herself most of the time
organizing a band of spies to operate against the German army in
France."
"Yes, that is true; but she was a woman who had done some good and her
life should have been spared. At least they think so in France and
England where funds are being raised to build monuments to her memory."
XII--THE "SCRAP OF PAPER"--A DEATH WARRANT
The train was entering the station at Warnemünde. Miss Bross seemed
nervous. She handed me a small scrap of paper, saying, "If I am on the
train after we leave Warnemünde, hand it back to me; otherwise do what
you like with it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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