1914 – Movement and Stalemate
1. From Ennetières, France to Hamelin, Germany
Joe and Mike understood the order “hände hoch” despite not knowing German. They had learned to say “hande in die lug” (“hands in the air”) when capturing Afrikaans-speaking fighters in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, and the German command sounded similar to them. Besides, their captors’ attitude and hostile gestures reinforced their understanding. Realising that they had no other option than to surrender, they discarded their weapons and raised their hands while turning to face their enemy at close quarters. It was the terrible moment they had never reckoned on experiencing – eye-to-eye with the enemy.
The Allies defended Ennetières-en-Weppes by Lille in France during the Battle of Lille-Armentières. But it had fallen to the Germans on the 20th of October 1914. That struggle cost the 2nd Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry (2/DLI) four dead NCOs and men, 46 wounded and 177 missing. [1] [2] The British Army assumed the unaccounted for Durhams were killed, missing in action or taken captive, Joe Rutherford and Mike O’Brien among the latter. The enemy killed Major Blake too and injured Lieutenants Beart, Gilbertson and Norton, who they left dying in enemy hands. [3]
For Joe and Mike, the 20th of October 1914 was the end of their war on the Western Front. It was just one month and one day from when they entered the war in the first rudimentary British trenches of the Great War in the Aisne region, and two and a half months after the war had started. Joe Rutherford, a slight, 5-foot 7-inch, good-looking man with dark hair and a moustache, and Mike O’Brien, a strong and scrappy 5-foot 7-inch man with dark curly hair, were Jarrow-born Geordie [4] working men of Irish descent. The marras were now part of a group of captive British soldiers, in the care of Imperial Germany.[5]
The captured soldiers’ destination was a German Imperial Army POW camp somewhere in Germany; which one and what that held in store for them, or whether they would survive it, was anybody’s guess at this stage. But, despite having fought through horrific battles with their enemy, they were still unharmed. They had survived an ordeal by fire on the Western Front, but they were now POWs!
“I’m ready to die,” whispered Mike. “This is the worst thing that could have happened to us, Joe! But I’m ready to die for my king and country.”
“Aye, that’s true, Mike,” murmured Joe while gathering his thoughts on the matter. “I have never even thought of this happening to us, but I’m not prepared to die. I can’t die because I have a wife and bairns at home. And nor should you be, my old friend, for your wife’s sake. We will survive this war the way we did the last. I told Mary that, should I die, she was free to remarry. But this upset her very much; she cried and cried, so we didn’t discuss it any further. We also discussed the possibility of injury. And she said she would nurse me back to full health as soon as I was home. But we never discussed the possibility of capture by the enemy. Our training didn’t cover it, and it never occurred to me, although, based on our experience in the South African War, it should have.”
“Aye, Ruth and I had more or less the same talk,” replied Mike. “And she became upset too. So, I guess that’s a topic you should best leave unsaid with women.”
“Nee, Mike,” replied Joe. “It’s right to talk about it. You’re tied together now, so you need to share such thoughts. It’s how you speak of it that’s important.”
“Aye, Joe,” replied Mike. “But I’m sure you’re better at it than I am.”
This brief sequence summarised it for most British POWs. The last thing an early Great War soldier expected at the Front was capture. They entered the war, understanding that their lives and limbs were at risk, and they accepted this. After the first battles they had lived through in this war, they expected the possibility of injury or death, and they came to terms with it. But being captured and imprisoned by the enemy was beyond their imagination or comprehension. Being taken prisoner was to them the ultimate failure. When detained, the only thing that went through their minds was that they had disappointed everybody. They felt they had betrayed their fellow soldiers and regiment, their country and King, their community at home and their loved ones. [6] It was the most humiliating thing that could have happened to any soldier during this war.
Their German guard then rebuked them again, poking them with his rifle with a loud and stern warning, “Nicht sprechen!” A German officer nearby translated this command into English for the assembled British prisoners. “No talking. Take off your equipment and leave it here,” he said, pointing to a pile of discarded rifles and other military equipment. “Keep quiet and do what the guards tell you.” The men followed orders but could hold on to personal items such as letters, pay books or photos of their sweethearts and children. An interrogating German officer later examined these.
There was loud shouting and the occasional gunshot as the Germans herded together more surviving Tommies of the 2/DLI and other battalions into a tight group on the edge of the village now under German control. They could not see much at first, but soon enough, their companions appeared out of the acrid smoke-filled gloom, most of whom had glum looks on their faces. A few of these recent arrivals were resisting the guards. The Germans brought the few more challenging ones to heel through brutal blows to their bodies with their rifle butts. They shot those who gave the enemy any reason to execute them, even if not permitted by the war conventions. Those Tommies, too, soon realised that any further resistance was futile. The marras recognised a sizeable group of Sherwood Foresters coming in their direction. The prisoners’ numbers had swollen to a considerable group of 100 or more. Then there were East and West Yorkshiremen, Moroccans and French soldiers too, many of whom Joe had fought alongside in his first battle. They appeared out of the mist and smoke, shuffling forward as a group. No one dared utter a word. They awaited their fate in stony silence while their captors barked out incomprehensible blasts of commands and degrading insults, in English or French from time to time too.
Joe gave a sideward glance and grimace to Mike, but he avoided provoking tension with the guards by talking. Their immediate future was very much on their minds. To the best of Joe’s knowledge, they had received no information during training on the rules of war for prisoners. They couldn’t know that Chapter II of the Geneva Convention signed in October 1907 at The Hague, focussed on prisoners of war.
“Prisoners of war are in the hostile Government’s power, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them. They must humanely treat all POWs. All the belongings of prisoners, except arms, horses and military papers, remain the POW’s property.” [7]
But a Durham officer POW knew of this convention, and he shared his knowledge with as many lower rank men as he could before being separated from them, officers going to separate camps.
“Remember men; you’re soldiers, not animals,” he said. “But you mustn’t argue with them since you might provoke them. Just remember your rights and discuss any grievances you have at the right time with a German officer.”
Now and then, they got another harsh nudge in their back or neck from a German rifle to move them on quicker, which they daren’t protest.
But Mike couldn’t hold back, muttering, “Bloody Huns!”
“Careful, Mike,” Joe reminded him; but it was too late.
“Was? Was hast Du gesacht?” asked the guard, screaming. Mike looked surprised and shrugged his shoulders. But the guard wasn’t happy with that gesture. He was sure that he had heard the word “Hun” and knew it was an insult.
Before the war, British propaganda spread the word that the Germans were descendants of the warlike Asian Huns made notorious by the reign of Attila. Kaiser Wilhelm II started this myth by a statement he made during the Boxer Rebellion in China. He gave the order to his army to act with brutality towards the Boxer rebels.
“Mercy will not be shown, and prisoners will not be taken. Just as a thousand years ago, the Huns under Attila won a reputation of might that lives on in legends, so may the name of Germany in China, such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look askance at a German.”
British propaganda later used the term “Hun” from this speech during the Great War as a derogatory label for the Germans. The spiked Pickelhaube helmet, or pickaxe bonnet, worn by German forces mimicking the headgear of the Huns in battle, reinforced the analogy. As a result, the terrified Tommy prisoners feared their captors might live up to their reputation. Their supreme commander was the same Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The guard grabbed Mike and spun him around to meet his rifle straight on. “Was has Du gesacht?” he yelled. Then a German officer close by said to the guard. “Lass das sein, Korporal. Wir mussen weiter. Keine scheiße.”
No one translated that for the British soldiers, but whatever the officer said defused a dangerous situation, sanity returned, and the column resumed its forward progress. The Germans herded the prisoners to a mustering point on the road out of Ennetières towards the new German lines. After a march of two hours, they arrived at a wire enclosure resembling a rough cage where the Germans had already assembled at least 200 to 300 or more British, French and Moroccan prisoners. There they waited in groups as their captors rounded up more and more.
“Shite,” cursed Mike in a whisper. “Are we animals or soldiers?”
“To these guards, we are animals,” replied Joe. “They could shoot us like animals.”
This holding pen the Germans called a Dulag, short for the German Durchgangslager (transit camp). Before being sent to a POW camp, a captured prisoner of war had to pass through these Dulags. They were impromptu stops where the Germans gathered them, interrogated them, and noted their details before dispatching them to their onward destinations in Germany.
The Great War was the first war where both sides of the conflict agreed to track POWs via the Red Cross in neutral Switzerland, an organisation that was only 51 years old in 1914. The Red Cross required the captors to detail the following information: the name and surname of the prisoner; their ID number, rank, unit; the place and date of capture – Lille (Ennetières), 20th of October 1914; any injuries; the destination POW camp once known; and their last pre-war residence address. So, the German interrogator jotted down the details and reported the capture of Joe and Mike and the others to the Red Cross.
“But this place is disgusting,” whispered Mike. “There’s nowhere to sit that isn’t wet or plain mud.”
“Aye, and it’s bloody freezing,” replied Joe. “But we must survive this, Mike.”
The men were already so weak and demotivated. Hundreds of disheartened men descended onto the wet ground to rest or sleep through the few days their captors held them there. They received little for hunger or comfort, and running water was unavailable; they only found a few buckets of drinking water scattered about, with a tin cup attached to them on a string. Their captors provided long trenches dug next to the fences as open-air latrines, but they didn’t provide paper wipes. More humiliation! But what else could they do but resign themselves to their fate?
It was in these compounds that medics first gave the wounded men first aid. Those with serious injuries requiring further treatment, they sent to a nearby German field hospital. Many of the men had injuries, and what food they received was scant nourishment. The most vulnerable among them were dying. Every morning, guards investigated the enclosure to see if anyone had expired during the night. They would pick up any corpses and take them to a shallow trench outside the wire cage. There they discarded the bodies and covered them with a bit of lime and soil.
“My God, look how many there are of us prisoners,” said Mike, “and they’re dropping like flies. And is that any way to treat our dead companions?”
“Aye, poor buggers. Wounded, I reckon. Or sick with a fever. They couldn’t make it under these bloody awful conditions,” replied Joe. “And no, I’m sure that it’s not allowed to treat the dead the way they are treating them. I’m coming to hate these Huns too, Mike.”
But even during this dreadful time, Joe and Mike renewed old friendships and struck up fresh acquaintances among the Sherwood Foresters and Yorkshiremen with whom they had fought at the Aisne. They traded memories of their torrid battles and bonded at once, brothers in arms, the battlefields creating lifetime friendships among fellow combatants.
“That’s one good thing about the military,” said Mike. “I love and respect these chaps already. We have been through so much together in such a brief time.”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “They are a magnificent bunch of laddies. There we were, side by side, fired upon by the Boche in the Aisne trenches, or while running through the bog and turnip fields of French Flanders. We have suffered a lot together, cheek by jowl. What a gathering of wayward heroes we are here.”
“Aye. Now we are prisoners, one and all, and suffering at the hands of these Huns,” murmured Mike, this time with more caution. “What more will we live through together now?”
Among the old acquaintances rekindled was Walter (Walt) Lane of C-Company, a close friend and fellow “Durham”, even though he was born in Leeds. Walt was a tall, handsome man with brown wavy hair but no moustache, as was becoming more popular.
“Howay, Walt! They got you too, old friend,” called Mike, while hugging him.
“Aye,” replied Walt. “I got careless, and they caught me at Ennetières.”
“Aye, us too,” replied Joe. “Looks like our war in the trenches is over. But what will become of us now, is up to God and the Boche.”
“Aye,” replied Walt. “God and the Boche, for sure.”
“Well, it’s good of you to join us,” said Joe.
“My God, look at this,” said Walt. “There are men from so many units here, only a few of which I recognise – it’s a real mixed bag of British fighting men. Are there any left on our line? And look at how filthy this cage is. Do they expect us to sit or lie in that?”
“Well, at least we aren’t the only losers,” commented Mike. “More keep coming. I only hope we are doing the same to the Boche on the other side of the Front!”
“Aye Mike, but I’m sure we are treating them better than the way they are treating us,” replied Joe, “not that it will change much. There are so many of them.”
The march to the Dulag had not been without incident. The occasional stray friendly bullet or shell from the British side of the front lines had wounded or killed Allied soldiers and Germans. They had to circumnavigate the shot holes in the road too. A fresh set of guards, including German lancers on horseback, escorted them. And then, a few nasty incidents unfolded in front of them.
In one incident, a few cantankerous Tommies were defying the guards, and a scuffle ensued.
“Get back in line, you,” shouted a German guard.
“Up yours, you bloody Hun,” replied one soldier. “I answer only to British officers, not you scum.”
Then another such protest broke out a scant distance away, and then another.
“You can’t treat us like cattle,” shouted another Tommy.
“Yeah,” called another, as the protests grew. “We’re men, not animals.”
The guards called in the lancers, who charged into the ranks on horseback. Under direction from the German guards, they speared the protesting Tommies like wild pigs with their lances. To them, the objections voiced by the British prisoners were equivalent to resistance or trying to escape. It gave them an excuse to rid themselves of ill-tempered men and to make sure that the rest toed the line.
“Shite, Mike; did you see that?” murmured Joe to his marra. “What they just did was the same as the British officers’ sport of Pig-Sticking in India, with the same disgusting result. Do you remember that?”
“Aye, Joe,” murmured Mike. “These are cruel bastards. We had better behave ourselves and stay out of trouble for now. Otherwise, we’ll end up on the end of one of those lances.”
A German soldier noticed them talking to each other and shouted “Wovon sprechen Sie” [8] while lowering his rifle in their direction. In this instant so soon after their capture and the lancer incident, they froze in terror.
“I don’t know what he is saying,” whispered Joe, “but he looks as if he could shoot us without a problem.”
“Aye, Joe. Or bring in one of those lancers back to stick us,” replied Mike reaching his hands even higher and nodding to the guard, “let’s be careful.”
Joe and Mike weren’t sure what he was saying but understood his intent. So, they both held their hands higher in the air and called “Nix, nix, nix”. They had learned that this word meant “nothing” and hoped it would placate their antagonist. That satisfied the guard for the time being, who found their reaction with “Nix, nix, nix” humorous, laughing with his buddies and humiliating the Tommies even further.
After what seemed an eternity, the Germans mustered them on the road under the watchful eyes of their guards. A much more significant number of Prussian Uhlans lancers on their horses joined the others. Uhlans were Polish-Lithuanian light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols and a celebrated unit of the Imperial Army. Under their watch, a long march to an unknown destination began. They now numbered over a thousand POWs. Instead of being proud armed fighting men, they were a rag-tag shuffling crowd of lost souls, separated from their rightful place on the other side of the Western Front. They moved away from France and meandered through the Belgian countryside under German control, far from the front lines. When officers weren’t present, the guards could be provocative and even violent as they coaxed the lagging soldiers to keep up with the march. The Uhlans used their lances from their horses to jab and jostled the prisoners to keep up the pace. [9]
After 2 ½ hours of lumbering along narrow lanes through Belgian farmlands, they arrived at a railway siding where a cattle train was waiting. There the German wards instructed them to entrain 40 to 50 men per waggon. Once loaded, German soldiers went through the cars with buckets of water and a few loaves of black bread, their nourishment for the journey to Germany. The Germans then shut and locked the doors of the waggons and waited for a locomotive to arrive. After four long hours of waiting in such cramped quarters, the engine reversed into the station and hooked up the cars. But even before that, the men noticed there were no toilets!
“How the hell are we going to have a shite in these overcrowded waggons?” asked Mike with scorn. “Do they expect us to shit on the waggon floor like cattle?”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “It looks as if we can expect anything in this war.”
“Maybe they’ll stop from time to time and let us off for relief,” suggested Walt, who had by then attached himself to Joe and Mike.
The duration of their journey depended not only on the distance to their destination but on other delaying factors; such as the train diverted to sidings from time to time to make way for passing troop and supply trains from the other direction on their way to the Western Front. At intervals along the way, they stopped, the guards ordering the prisoners out of the train to relieve themselves. On these occasions, they sometimes received more water and bread. The journey was slow going, confined and unpleasant. But, away from the mud and Uhlan lancers, their spirits lifted somewhat.
Then, in the dead of night, they rolled through an extensive city.
“Where are we?” asked a soldier.
“It must be Brussels,” called another.
“Howay, another city on our list of experiences, Joe,” said Mike, nudging his marra.
“Aye, and another capital city of Europe,” replied Joe. “Where to next stop?”
“Berlin?” suggested Walt with a chuckle.
Next day the train crawled through a pastoral and forested landscape on the edge of the Ardennes in eastern Belgium, arriving that evening at Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen, as the Germans call it, on the German border. The train crawled through the station where hundreds of German men, women and children had gathered for the sport of chastising enemy POWs passing through from the Front. The din was horrific as they screamed invective and threw objects such as stale bread and rotting food at the passing cars. It relieved the men that the train hadn’t stopped, for they feared for their lives with this angry mob, and a few hungry soldiers even ventured to eat the best bread and food they could find.
This hostility was but a passing phase. At the start of the war in August, the German citizens had been most friendly and hospitable, even showing sympathy with the soldiers by handing them gifts of food and drink when they stopped at the border stations. But the German Army high command was most unhappy with this practice. So, they issued new orders and placards hung at train stations instructing the locals to admonish their enemies. They spread rumours among German citizens of the horrors the British soldiers had perpetrated against their German counterparts on the Front. At train stations, they hung mannequins dressed in Allied uniforms by the neck, visible to prisoners passing by in trains.
“These people hate us,” said Mike. “Don’t they know that it wasn’t us who started this shite war?”
“To them, we are the enemy,” replied Joe. “And didn’t you see those posters in the station? And those scarecrows in our uniforms? The Kaiser is telling the German people that we are the monsters.”
“It’s amazing how simple folk can be so hate-filled,” added Walt. “Are they like that with their own?”
“I don’t know about you, laddies,” said Joe. “But I’m getting bloody stiff and uncomfortable standing in these cars for hours at a time. If this goes on much longer, how are we going to sleep? Standing up?”
“It’s the same with me, Joe,” replied Mike. “How much longer are we going to be like this?”
“I’m sure we wouldn’t treat our prisoners like this,” said Mike. “These Huns are barbarians!”
But, for another two days, they trundled across Germany, passing through the impressive city of Cologne with its towering cathedral towers. They crossed the famous Hohenzollern Bridge over the River Rhine used by the German army trains travelling to and from the Western Front. Then they turned north and went through industrial towns such as Leverkusen, Wuppertal, Gütersloh and Bielefeld. Between these busy industrial cities, they saw peaceful rolling forests, farmland and tiny villages, some surrounding ancient castles on hilltops. The wooden slats of the cattle cars impaired their views of the panoramas, but what they saw differed from England and France, and it intrigued them.
“What a beautiful country,” said Mike. “Is this to be our new home?”
“Aye, Mike. It is beautiful over here, and so different,” replied Joe. “Who knows how long we’ll be here?”
“Aye, and how will our gaolers treat us,” added Walt? “What will life be like as prisoners? If it’s anything like this train trip, we’re in trouble. Shit, I need to stretch out and rest a while!”
“No such luck, Walt,” replied Joe. “I guess we’ll get that at our destination.”
Their life was fraught with questions, but these working-class men from North East England were continuing their explorations of the world. And despite their apprehensions and discomfort, they felt excitement too. They had explored Africa and India within the British Empire. And within the past few weeks, they became acquainted with the French, Belgian and German countryside, cities and villages. Without appreciating the nuances of the distinct cultures they were experiencing, they could see and take in the differences. They were learning about early twentieth-century Europe, a diverse industrial powerhouse similar to the one they already knew back home.
The prisoners had completed the slow and excruciating 330-mile journey from Ennetières, France to Hamelin, Germany in three days.
“Well, we’ll soon find out where we’re going, laddies,” said Joe. “It looks like we might be there. Look at our welcoming committee. You know, we are lucky to be alive. And I, for one, will try to make the best of whatever we are about to experience.”
“Well, laddies,” added Mike. “I don’t care what you say. I wouldn’t trust the Huns. They are the ones who put us in this mess.”
§
[1] Non-Commissioned Officers – Sergeants and Corporals
[2] S.G.P Ward, Faithful, The Story of the Durham Light Infantry, Naval and Military Press, 1962
[3] Ibid
[4] Geordie is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and their dialect.
[5] A marra is a workmate or friend in the Geordie dialect spoken in North East England
[6] Richard van Emden, Prisoners of the Kaiser (The Last POWs of the Great War), Pen & Sword, 2012
[7] Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.
[8] “What are you talking about?”
[9] Richard van Emden, Prisoners of the Kaiser (The Last POWs of the Great War), Pen & Sword, 2012
