Meeting the Enemy (34 page)

There are only two known incidents in which a soldier’s loyalty was questioned, and, ironically, both men had British as opposed to German surnames. The first occurred at the end of April 1917 when an intelligence officer was sent to visit 2nd ILC to investigate a letter written to Private Herman Cook. The letter had been damaged in transit, the contents apparently falling out of the envelope. It was found to contain, wrote the Commanding Officer, ‘many coarse insulting phrases and [was] evidently pro German’. The letter had been addressed to Reading and forwarded to France. There is no record that Cook approved of or in any way solicited the contents of the letter. The second incident occurred a few months later when Private Harold Guest, serving with the 1st ILC, was sent back to England as a result of proceedings taken against him by his Commanding Officer on account of his ‘pro German agitation’. How many more felt the same way can never be known, although General Edward Wace, in a Report on Labour, estimated that less than 5 per cent had pro-German sympathies and that these men were known to the Commanding Officers.

The men of the ILCs were used piecemeal, rarely if ever working as a complete unit. By and large they were broken up into small groups and sent wherever they were needed and to whoever asked for help, being employed on what was known as the ‘task system’, giving men a distinct challenge to complete.

In the first six weeks overseas, 3rd ILC helped lay over fifty miles of light railway track behind the lines, as well as maintaining the existing line in running order. The officer commanding the Second Army’s Light Railways was undoubtedly pleased with the work, sending a memo to be read to all ranks employed: ‘I wish to express my personal thanks to each of your officers and men for the work which they have done and are still doing . . . throughout the worst conditions of shell fire. Every man’s best efforts are wanted, and I am sure that we shall have them.’

Much of the ILC’s work was repetitive and physically demanding. There was work in forestry, cutting down trees and, in quarries, digging sand. Parties of men worked on farms and in brickworks. They were sent to load lorries at Royal Engineer stores, or to help construct Nissan huts, even, on one occasion, to build a compound for German POWs. At least some of the 3rd ILC’s time was spent in the menial but important job of salvage from abandoned or overrun battlefields, scouring the ground and disused trenches for everything that could be reused or melted down, including rum jars, biscuit tins, oil drums, petrol cans, rubber and shrapnel helmets, all of which would be taken to the Company Dump. Salvage work was dangerous. Private Albert Wenninger, of the 3rd ILC, a butcher from Shepherds Bush in London, was accidentally killed when a 4½-inch shell exploded while he was helping to dump old ammunition into craters. The explosion set off dozens of other shells, wounding a further eighteen men.

In May, Private Woolf Adler, aged twenty-eight, died at the 10th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) of shrapnel wounds to his back and left hip after the Company’s billets were shelled. One other man was wounded. Adler, the son of German parents, and a former stockbroker from West Hampstead, had volunteered in December 1915 and was working in munitions when posted in February 1917 to the 31st Middlesex Regiment. He had been in France just ten weeks and was one of four men serving with the 3rd ILC who died overseas. His widowed mother, Regine, was notified that her son had died for his country.

Woolf Adler was buried in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, seven miles west of Ypres. He is one of 9,901 British and Empire troops almost all of whom died as a result of their wounds at a nearby CCS. For this reason, more than 99 per cent have known graves. Inadvertently, the cemetery creates the impression that the majority of men did not simply disappear, never to be seen again. Tragically, however, around half of those killed in the Great War have no known grave.

Receiving news of a loved one’s disappearance released a trapdoor through which families fell into a pit of instantaneous fear and despair, leaving the majority of those affected with nothing to do but wait. The army would forward further details, if any were ever received.

Hope was not extinguished altogether; there was a reasonable chance that a loved one had been taken prisoner, but as time passed the silence on all fronts became too much to bear. If the Germans did not notify the Red Cross within a month that a man was a prisoner then, in all likelihood, that man was still on the battlefield. With shellfire churning up the ground over which attacks were made, the chances were poor that a body would remain identifiable for long. Families might get word from a comrade of the missing man, but all too often it was to confirm their darkest fears; it was not a kindness to hold out flickering hope.

‘The missing’ were an egalitarian group among whom there was no distinction between rich and poor. In desperation, those who could afford it could pay for additional private searches that invariably confirmed what the family already knew, that the man was untraceable. Pre-war contacts were called upon: German governesses who had returned home at the outbreak of war were asked through third parties to place appeals for information in the press and to circulate names of missing officers. But to what end? Leaving no stone unturned may have proved ultimately cathartic for some but searching could also lead to a pointless fixation on the missing, and the purgatory of forlorn hope. Hard as it may have seemed, stoically waiting for news was probably the best option for families and, just occasionally, it was enemy soldiers who provided the answers.

On 25 July 1915 the 1/6th Sherwood Foresters were holding front-line trenches near Sanctuary Wood, just outside Ypres. The battalion War Diary’s otherwise sparse entries that day noted one item of interest: a German aeroplane had been shot down, and the observer had fallen ‘in rear of our trenches’. A great many men on the ground witnessed the incident. The German plane, raked by machine-gun fire, had burst into flames. Eyewitnesses reported that the observer fell as the plane turned upside down, others that he jumped; either way, a man was seen to fall well before the plane crashed. In the history of the 1/5th Sherwood Foresters, a neighbouring battalion in the line that day, this account was given. ‘It was an interesting sight for those who saw the event – the first burst of smoke, the observer throwing himself out, falling the greater part of the way like a partly deflated balloon (his trench coat held the air), the bump when he struck the ground.’

The ‘observer’ was identified as thirty-nine-year-old Captain Hans Roser, and from his body were taken various ‘decorations’ including a ‘flight badge’. The 1/6th Sherwood Foresters’ Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Godfrey Goodman, felt the belongings were of enough sentimental value to be returned to Roser’s family. After some understandable delay, these were sent to Danzig in November after which a reply was received from Mrs Roser thanking Colonel Goodman for his kindness.

This should have been the end of the matter but news of Goodman’s actions reached Captain Roser’s nephew, an artillery officer by the name of Reinhardt, who, mindful that one good turn deserved another, penned this remarkable letter ‘in the field’, in May 1916.

My family have received correspondence which passed between Lieutenant Colonel G D Goodman and the German Foreign Office through the intermediary of the American Embassy at Berlin. According to the statement of this officer, who commands the 6th Sherwood Foresters, Captain Roser, my mother’s younger brother, was shot down in his aeroplane behind the British lines east of Ypres on July 25th 1915, and was buried with full military honours by the orders of Colonel Goodman who saw the machine fall. The decorations found on his body have also been forwarded to us through the same channels together with detailed information about the position of his grave. It is through the exertions of Colonel Goodman that my family received the first certain news of my relative’s death, as he was previously certified as missing.

Having been appraised by this means of the possibility of communicating with the relatives of enemy officers through the American Diplomatic Representatives, I am now anxious to convey news of a fallen English comrade in arms in a similar manner to his widow who has probably remained in complete ignorance of his fate since 1914. The officer in question is Captain [Henry Telford] Maffett of B Company, 2nd Leinster Regiment who fell in the field of honour on October 23rd 1914, under German artillery and machine gun fire together with the greater part of his battalion (he was with the centre company but seems to have been leading the battalion). His death was caused by a shell splinter and must have been quick and painless, as he still had a pencil and half written despatch in his hand. His grave, dug by my men, is 600 paces north-west of height 42, west of Lille, on the slope of a little fort, immediately at the corner of a ditch lined with willows which runs there. The grave was at the time marked with a cross and bore his cap and epaulettes. Some of his men and one or two officers were buried by his side or in the British trenches near by.

I have this officer’s wrist compass and two despatches, one apparently addressed to his regiment, the other to a subordinate company commander. In the former he describes his position and asks for artillery support; in the second he gives brief fighting orders. I had in my possession also an empty envelope addressed to his wife, Mrs Maffett, but I have unfortunately lost it . . . I will forward the things I have to Mrs Maffett as soon as it is certain that this endeavour to get in touch with her is successful.

I should be glad if a translation of the contents of this letter could be communicated to Captain Maffett’s widow through diplomatic channels so that I may be able to make a return for the chivalrous service rendered to my family by Colonel Goodman.

Reinhardt, Lieutenant, Battery Commander

Reinhardt’s letter was sent to Captain Maffett’s sister, Emilie Harmsworth (sister-in-law of the great newspaper proprietors Viscounts Northcliffe and Rothermere), who asked that a message of appreciation be conveyed to Lieutenant Reinhardt.

Viscount Grey will be much obliged if the US Ambassador at Berlin can be informed that the sister of the deceased officer is anxious that the expression of her grateful thanks may be conveyed to Lieutenant Reinhardt for the particulars which he has thus kindly communicated to the family, as well as for the details in regard to Captain Maffett’s burial and the care bestowed upon the preservation of his effects.

Through the recovery of personal possessions belonging to Roser and Maffett, both families were informed of the circumstances in which their loved ones had died. In time they discovered where they were buried, too. Captain Roser’s grave is notable as the only German casualty buried in the CWGC cemetery at Sanctuary Wood, while Captain Henry Maffett lies in Houplines Communal Cemetery Extension.

The family of Private Charles Mole was in a state of limbo, similar in circumstances to those experienced by the families of Roser and Maffett. Their son was missing near the town of Cambrai and nothing further was heard of him, until the family received a letter from a German missionary, Immanuel Genahr, and his English wife, Constance. Immanuel Genahr had received a letter from the battlefields from a German soldier and fellow Christian named Weingartner who had found Charles Mole lying in a shell hole with shrapnel wounds to his legs and hands. Weingartner had dressed Private Mole’s wounds and brought him a cup of tea, after which Mole was carried to the main road where he would be picked up and taken to hospital. Weingartner’s letter was detailed.

He had two letters with him, which he [Mole] handed to me. These letters I am sending you with this. Whether they ever will reach you I do not know. Mr Genahr will know how to deal with these letters, which I presume are written to your son . . . We could not make ourselves understood, he talking English and we German. He tried also to speak some French. From what I understand, he had been lying there for two days. As the place was some distance from the main road, no one had noticed him. So I went again to see my poor friend late in the night and found him still lying there . . . I was glad to find him still alive. I had some tea and water with me and allowed him to choose what he preferred and tucked him up as well and as warm as I could. Before I left him I knelt down at his side and prayed with him. Though he may not have understood me he well knew that I was praying with him and for him. I was moved to tears to see how grateful your son looked at my little services.

The next morning Weingartner returned but Private Mole was already in a field hospital. ‘My sincere and fervent wish is that this letter will safely reach you, especially in case your son should succumb to his wounds and no news about him should ever reach you.’ Nineteen-year-old Charles Mole died a day after reaching hospital and a day before Weingartner wrote his letter. He was buried in Cambrai East Military Cemetery, a plot begun by the Germans for war dead irrespective of nationality. It was designed with great care and attention, and included monuments to German, French, British and Empire dead and in the centre a memorial stone with the words inscribed: ‘The Sword divides, but the cross unites’. In September 1918, Cambrai was captured by the Allies, when the cemetery too fell into Allied hands.

Weingartner’s letter reached Charles and Emily Mole probably before confirmation of their son’s death. While the letter must have offered hope that he had survived, the knowledge that someone had cared for him, and had shown him extraordinary humanity, must have been of enormous comfort in the difficult years to come. The fact, too, that Weingartner had been instrumental in helping their son find a known resting place instead of joining the ranks of the missing must also have been of consolation.