- 'My Adventures in the Great War'
- by E. Alexander Powell 1879 - 1958
American War Correspondent and Adventure Writer
on the former border between France and Germany in Alsace
Part 1
When the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, I was on a camping trip in the High Sierra. Being conversant with the crosscurrents and complexities of Central European politics, I was convinced that the murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne would precipitate a crisis which would inevitably end in war. Of this I was so sure that I cut short my stay in California and started for New York to offer my services to one of the great metropolitan dailies as a war correspondent.
At that time only a handful of American writers, notably Richard Harding Davis, Stephen Bonsai, Frederick Palmer, could be termed vocational war correspondents and they were under contract to the big syndicates. Consequently the important news-papers were depleting their staffs to send representatives to the front. Sporting editors, baseball reporters, dramatic critics, book reviewers, gossip columnists, even cartoonists were being provided with passports, riding breeches, and American Express checks and rushed across the Atlantic to cover the impending conflict. Of these only a handful had ever been in Europe save as tourists, few spoke any language but English, most of them were abysmally ignorant of continental politics. Yet it was assumed that their press cards would pass them through the battle lines just as they passed them through the police lines in New York. I soon realized that my long residence in Europe and my familiarity with European politics were not going to help me to get a job as war correspondent. The editors wanted only men with newspaper experience. My only hope lay in trying a different approach.
I decided that my best bet was the New York World, partly because of its reputation for liberality and enterprise, partly because it was recognized as the organ of the Wilson Administration, which I surmised might prove helpful in Europe. I was received courteously by Charles M. Lincoln, who was managing editor of the World for ten years and who had read some of my magazine articles on foreign affairs.
"I want to make you a sporting proposition, Mr. Lincoln," I began before he had time to explain that he couldn't employ me as his budget was exhausted. "If the World will accredit me as a war correspondent, I will take the next steamer to Europe and pay all my expenses myself. If I don't make good, the World won't be one cent out of pocket. But if I do succeed in getting out the news, I shall expect to have my expenses refunded and to be paid adequately for my work. Now, how about it?"
"We'll take you up on that," said Mr. Lincoln, rising and shaking hands with me across his desk. "Frankly, I don't think that you will get to the front, or, if you do, that you will be able to get your stuff past the censor. But if you get the news through you'll find the World very generous."
The only contract I ever had with the World was Mr. Lincoln's handclasp, but beginning with my first dispatch — the account of the bombing of Antwerp — I was remunerated not only generously but munificently.
As I had to go to Washington to get my passport and visas, it was almost the end of July before I sailed for Europe. All or nearly all the other correspondents had headed for London or Paris, hoping to obtain permission to accompany the British or French armies. But the wheels of European officialdom turn exceeding slow, and I did not propose to waste precious time hanging about the Ministere de la Guerre or the War Office. I figured that my best chance of reaching the front was in Belgium, where I had once lived, where I would encounter a minimum of red tape, and through which the invading Germans must pass to reach the Channel coast. And by long odds the most strategically important town in Belgium was Antwerp. So I booked passage to Rotterdam on a Red Star boat, one of my fellow-passengers being Joseph Medill Patterson, then co-proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, who was headed for Germany with a bag containing ten thousand dollars in gold, though it was not clear how he planned to use it.
I landed at Rotterdam when the war was only two days old. I had been told that it was impossible to cross the Belgian frontier without a military pass, which was almost unprocurable, but standing in the Rotterdam railway station was a train jammed with refugees bound for Flushing and attached to it was a first-class carriage labeled "Anvers." I climbed aboard and two or three hours later was in Antwerp. Drawn up on the station platform was a regiment of chasseurs a pied who were being rushed to the front. Despite the August heat the men wore patent leather képis and long blue greatcoats. As no one demanded my papers or indeed paid any attention to me, I pushed through the soldiery, tossed my bags into a fiacre, and told the driver to take me to the Hotel St. Antoine, where I got the last room in the famous old hotel, which was crowded with fugitive officials and diplomats.
At eleven minutes past one o'clock on the morning of August 25 death came to Antwerp out of the air. I had bought some English newspapers and magazines at a kiosk in the Place de Meir and had taken them up to my room on the upper floor of the hotel. Except for my coat I had not undressed. It was a very hot night and I had gone to the window to see if it could be opened wider when my attention was attracted by a deep humming directly overhead, like the drone of some monstrous insect. To see what it was I scrambled through the window onto the broad ledge which ran around the upper floor. From that vantage point I could discern a long, dark shape, resembling a mammoth cigar, moving quite slowly across a sky brilliant with stars. I am not good at estimating altitudes, but I judged that the nocturnal visitor, which even then I failed to recognize, was only about two thousand feet above the sleeping city.
As I was staring at the strange shape overhead there was a blinding flash, a shattering blast, and the two upper floors of a house across a narrow street disappeared in an eruption of bricks, mortar, and dust. The immensely thick walls of the St. Antoine, originally a monastery, rocked and swayed as in the throes of an earthquake. The glass in one of my windows broke and the fragments tinkled on the floor. A few seconds later came another flash and blast . . . and another . . . and another — ten in all. Now I belatedly realized what was happening. A Zeppelin was bombing Antwerp and I was witnessing the first air raid on a city in the history of the world.
Snatching up my coat, I sprang to the door, raced down the darkened hall and four flights of stairs, passed the half-awakened night clerk, and reached the street while the bombs were still bursting, though in diminuendo. I inspected several of the bombed buildings and helped to carry out some of the victims before I was driven off by the police. Then I hastened back to the hotel to write my first dispatch to the World — which scooped the world.
Now the lobby and reception rooms of the St. Antoine swarmed with suddenly awakened and frightened guests in various stages of dishabille, mainly government officials and foreign diplomats and their families who had fled from Brussels. The men were in pajamas and dressing gowns, the women in nightgowns and peignoirs. An attaché of the British Legation, usually toplofty and supercilious, clad in canary-colored pajamas and a purple bath-robe, was rushing about like a distracted hen, having mislaid his toupee and false teeth. But he still had a monocle screwed in his eye. Though a mere newspaper correspondent, I had an immense moral advantage over the diplomats for I had on my pants.
The only person who seemed wholly unfrightened and self-possessed was a tallish, dark-haired, strikingly handsome woman whose peignoir, open at the neck, revealed a robe de nuit of diaphanous pink silk. Drawing me aside, she asked me in perfect English to tell her the extent of the bomb damage. I understood her eagerness to learn the details of the raid when she introduced herself as Mme. Emile Vandervelde, whose husband, as leader of the Labor Party and a Minister of State, was the most powerful politician in Belgium and one of the most prominent Socialists in Europe. She was, I think, English by birth, frank, vivacious, extremely attractive. Though it was now two o'clock in the morning, I suggested that we go into the bar, which had suddenly come to life and was doing a roaring business, and have a drink. Or, for that matter, several drinks. She told me that her husband had just been appointed head of a mission which was leaving in two days for the United States to plead for American assistance.
"Does M. Vandervelde speak English?" I asked.
"Not a word, nor do the others."
"Then you certainly should accompany your husband," I told her. "With your beauty and your intelligence, and your command of English, you could do more for the Belgian cause in America than a whole flock of politicians."
"I want so very, very much to go with this mission," she said, "and my husband wants me to go, but the king's entourage won't hear of it. They say that in these terrible times women should stay at home and nurse the wounded."
"Nonsense!" I said. "You can do a thousand times as much for your country in America as you can working in a Belgian hospital. If you want action always go to the man at the top, so I am going to write to the king and urge him to let you go to America. I think that I can promise that my paper, the New York World, will see that you get a tremendous popular welcome and will arrange for you to address mass meetings in the principal cities." (Which it did!)
"But you can't write to His Majesty direct," Mme. Vandervelde protested. "It isn't protocol. You must address him through his chef du cabinet."
"Of course I can write to the king!" I told her. "Just as I would write to the President of the United States. This is no time to worry about protocol with the Germans at the gates of Antwerp."
I wrote to King Albert that morning and he must have acted promptly, for when I entered the hotel dining room for dinner Mme. Vandervelde, very lovely in a black evening frock, rushed up and in view of everyone kissed me on the cheek.
"His Majesty received your letter this morning," she said. "He sent immediately for my husband and told him that I was to accompany the mission to the United States. And the queen has given me a message to read to the women of America. Oh, I'm so excited! I can never thank you enough. And my husband is as delighted as I am. But let him speak for himself."
She beckoned to a thickset, dark-bearded man in his late forties whom I recognized from his pictures in the newspapers as the famous labor leader and Socialist. M. Vandervelde thanked me effusively for having made it possible for his wife to accompany him to America.
"I am deeply indebted to you, M. Powell," he concluded, "and I like to pay my debts. So please tell me frankly what I can do for you before we sail. Our officials are rather afraid of foreign journalists, but, as you may know, I have some influence with the government."
Here was my chance to obtain the freedom of action which every war correspondent dreams of and rarely gets. I did not let it pass.
"I came here, Mr. Minister," I said, "to see the Belgian Army in action and to tell the American public about it. To do so I must have a pass which will permit me to go anywhere in Belgium, to visit any part of the front. And I need a car, a driver, and petrol to get to the front."
"That can be arranged," M. Vandervelde assured me. "Tomorrow morning I shall take you to see the Military Governor of Antwerp and the Chief of the General Staff."
That the Minister of Labor wielded great influence with the High Command was evidenced by the deference shown him at GHQ. Within half an hour I had a pass good for any sector of the front, an order on the motor pool for a car (I chose a 90 h.p. Minerva) and for petrol, which was very scarce. As driver I was assigned a daredevil young aristocrat named Roos. That I was accorded these extraordinary facilities, and that I was the only American correspondent authorized to accompany the Belgian armies in the field during the first year of the war, was not due to any special ability on my part, but to my great good luck in winning the gratitude of a very charming and influential lady whose husband happened to be a power in the government.
Mme. Vandervelde's trip to America was a tremendous success. In fact, she totally eclipsed the distinguished statesmen who composed the mission. She addressed huge mass meetings organized by the World, raised several million dollars for the Belgian refugees, and captivated everyone she met. Apparently King Albert was not scandalized by my breach of protocol in writing him on her behalf, for he sent me a bit of crimson ribbon from which depended a white enamel cross. But what I valued most were the congratulatory cablegrams sent me by Ralph Pulitzer, the proprietor of the World, and Charles M. Lincoln, the managing editor, who named a salary that far exceeded my greatest hopes.
On October 4 I gave a small luncheon at the St. Antoine for M. de Vos, the Burgomaster of Antwerp, United States Consul General Diederich, and a few others. I had just greeted M. de Vos when a big gray Rolls with "R.N." painted on its sides came screaming through the traffic in the Place de Meir, swung into the narrow Marché aux Souliers without perceptibly slackening speed, and skidded to a stop before the St. Antoine with protesting tires and squealing brakes. Almost before the car had stopped a rear door was violently flung open and a short, thickset, sandy- haired, rosy-cheeked man in a sort of naval uniform which I recognized as that of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House sprang to the pavement and bustled importantly into the hotel, puffing at a formidable cigar and thrusting out his elbows in a nervous gesture as though a crowd was pressing in upon him. As a matter of fact, only a handful of bystanders witnessed his dramatic advent.
"Who is that?" asked the Burgomaster.
"That," I told him, "is Mr. Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty."
The Sea Lord had darted up the broad marble stairway leading to the second floor and had reached the landing which overlooked the crowded lobby before he was overtaken by the panting head of the municipality.
"I am the Burgomaster of Antwerp, Monsieur le Ministre," said de Vos. "I hope that you bring us good news. We are greatly concerned about the safety of the city."
"There is no cause for worry, Mr. Burgomaster," replied Churchill, who was standing in effect on a rostrum, so that his words were clearly audible to the officials and diplomats in the lobby below. "I have brought with me a battalion of marines and a naval brigade, who landed at Ostend this morning and should be in Antwerp by nightfall. I think that the city is quite safe."
This announcement was greeted by a general sigh of relief, and the Burgomaster muttered a fervent "Dieu merci !"
Having witnessed the disembarkation at Ostend of the poorly trained and sketchily equipped naval reservists, I did not share the general confidence.
At luncheon Mr. Churchill's party, including the British minister, occupied the next table, so that the First Sea Lord and I were only a yard apart. Toward the close of the meal a personable young Englishman — if my memory serves me his name was Grant — representing the Northcliffe Press, asked me in a low voice if I thought that it would be proper for him to ask Mr. Churchill for an interview.
"Why not?" I said. "After all, he was once a newspaper correspondent himself."
But when Grant deferentially approached the First Sea Lord the latter angrily rebuffed him.
"I will not talk to you," Churchill almost shouted in a voice that could be heard throughout the dining room. "You pressmen have no business here at this time. Get out of Belgium at once!"
"If he had said that to me," I told the embarrassed journalist, raising my voice so that Churchill and his party could not fail to hear me, "I should have told him that I had just as much justification for being in Belgium during the German invasion as he had as a correspondent in Cuba during the insurrection. In fact, he was decorated by the Spaniards."
Apparently Churchill, who is a sportsman, did not take my remark amiss. For when I related the episode in Fighting in Flanders, which appeared a few months later, my London publisher, the late William Heinemann, fearing to run afoul of "DORA" — the Defense of the Realm Act — submitted the proofs of the book to the first Sea Lord. Heinemann told me that they were returned from the Admiralty the next day with a notation penciled on the margin:
"I guess Powell is right. W.C."
To avoid the delay involved in submitting my dispatches to Belgian censorship I customarily sent them by courier from Ostend, on the English Channel, to the offices of the World in London, whence they were cabled to New York. I might mention parenthetically that my dispatches were now being bought by the Chicago Tribune and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and that I also had a very lucrative arrangement with Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail and The Times.
Two or three times a week I motored from Antwerp to Ostend, handed my dispatches to the young Belgian I employed as a courier, and on my return trip stopped at Ghent to see the American vice-consul, Julius van Hee, who was in a position to pick up much valuable information.
"I'm glad you dropped in," van Hee said on one of these occasions, "for I'm in rather a jam. There's a very attractive young English girl in my office — a Miss Tennyson Jesse, a grand-niece of Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate. I understand that she's quite well known in England as she's written several successful plays and books. So Northcliffe sent her over here to write about the war from a woman's viewpoint. She has learned that I'm driving to Brussels tomorrow to get some vaccine and wants to go with me. But Brussels is no place for a girl, especially for one as pretty as Miss Jesse, and if the Germans learned that she was English they would intern her — if nothing worse. She won't listen to me but perhaps she'll take your advice."
The girl who sat in the big chair in van Hee's office was in her early twenties — twenty-two in fact; very slim and graceful, with a Yardley complexion and blue eyes which were disconcertingly ingenuous. Her hair, the color of ripe wheat, was cut page-boy fashion, curling outward from a face which, though delicate and sensitive, bespoke character and intelligence. She was the personification of honesty and innocence.
"Look here," I said bluntly, "you are a very foolish young woman to even think of accompanying Mr. van Hee to Brussels, which is filled with German troops. You have no papers but your passport, and when they find that you are English you certainly would be arrested and might even be treated as a spy. You haven't forgotten what they do to spies, have you?"
"But Lord Northcliffe is paying me a lot of money," she protested, "and I'm not doing anything to earn it. Surely you must understand that if I'm to make good as a correspondent I must see something to write about."
"It's out of the question for you to go to Brussels," I told her. "So why don't you stop bothering Mr. van Hee and let me take you to Antwerp? I'll ask Mrs. Sherman, the wife of our vice-consul, to find a room for you. I shall be going out to the front tomorrow or next day, and if it's reasonably quiet I see no reason why you couldn't go with me. Then you would have something to write about."
"You promise to take me if you possibly can?" she asked.
"I promise."
A few days later a friend on the General Staff, lunching with me at the St. Antoine, remarked that if I drove out toward Termonde that afternoon I might see that rare sight in modern warfare — a cavalry engagement.
"A detachment of German infantry has taken up a position commanding the highway," he explained, "and we're going to drive 'em out. Mind you, it won't be more than a skirmish, but the cavalry may put on a good show, for they have been clamoring to get at the Boche."
As this seemed an ideal opportunity, to keep my promise to Miss Tennyson Jesse — whose first name was Fryniwyd because she was Cornish, though her friends called her Peter after a character in one of her books — I sent Roos with the Minerva to pick her up and also to call for my American photographer, Donald Thompson.
Twenty kilometers along the Termonde road I met an officer whom I knew slightly and asked him where we could get a view of the engagement.
"It will hardly be an engagement," he told us. "Only a skirmish — if that. A handful of Boche with a couple of machine guns are concealed behind that hedge yonder and we're sending in a couple of squadrons of cavalry to clean them out. If you park your car just beyond the village church, you will be able to see the show and the lady will be quite safe."
He glanced at my companion admiringly, for even in those early days of the war women were almost never seen near the front.
"I don't want to be safe," Peter protested. "I'm here to see the war and write about it."
Obviously, the curtain was about to go up, for two squadrons of cavalry — Guides in fur busbies, green jackets, and cherry-colored breeches, Lancers in sky-blue and yellow — were debouching from the road into a long, grassy meadow opposite the village church. They were the crack troops of the Belgian Army, officered by members of the aristocracy. At the sound of a bugle the squadrons moved from column into line, horses prancing, sword blades and lance tips gleaming in the afternoon sun. The bugle blared again and the two lines advanced, first at a walk, then at a brisk trot, finally at a gallop, hoofs pounding the turf, accouterments jingling. When they had covered half the length of the meadow the bugles sounded the charge and the sabers went up, the lances down. "Vive la Belgique!" roared the troopers. It was a stirring spectacle, and Peter jumped up and down ia her excitement.
"What a picture!" she breathed. "It's like being back in Napoleonic times."
The Germans waited until the thundering avalanche of men and horses was within fifty yards of them. Then from the hedge which screened them leaped sheets of flame. The rattle of rifle fire and the chatter of machine guns combined in a deafening din. The enemy was in far greater strength than the Belgians had assumed, and the cavalry had ridden straight into a trap that had been prepared for them.
In an instant the ordered squadrons were thrown into confusion. Their sabers and lances, outmoded weapons, were useless against the hidden machine-gunners and riflemen. Troopers plunged from their saddles. Horses reared or went down. Riderless mounts galloped about aimlessly. The meadow was dotted with shapes in sky-blue and bottle-green. Some stirred and moaned. Others lay motionless and silent.
Though we must have been a quarter of a mile from the actual fighting, we were directly in the German line of fire. Bullets whined overhead, clipping leaves and twigs from the trees, kicking up spurts of dust in the dry fields or ricocheting from the pave. One drilled a hole in the windshield of the Minerva. Leaving the car beside the road, we took refuge behind an ancient country church, peering cautiously around an angle of the wall to see what was happening. After another futile charge, in which the troopers spurred their horses right up to the machine guns, the trumpets sounded the recall and the shattered squadrons came limping back, bringing their casualties with them. We had seen a cavalry charge, something that probably never will be seen again, though it was such a minor affair that it is not even mentioned by the historians. But it had dash and color, flashing blades and fluttering pennons and theatrical uniforms, and its memory will remain sharp and clear long after I have forgotten the great battles I was to witness later in the war.
The Germans had their siege guns in position before Antwerp by October 7, and that evening the bombardment of the city began, continuing for four days without cessation. On the third day they brought up their widely publicized 42-centimeter howitzers. These were the largest weapons known at that time, though during the second World War the Japanese armed their secret battleships with guns of even larger caliber.
The effect of these monster cannon was appalling. Their projectiles, each weighing more than a ton, sounded like an express train coming out of a tunnel. The roar would rise into a terrifying howl. Then would come an explosion which shook the city to its foundations. The streets of Antwerp were as deserted as those of Pompeii. Everyone, or nearly everyone, who could leave the city had left. The British minister had chartered a steamer on which virtually the whole of the large British colony, many members of the government, and nearly all of the diplomatic corps had embarked for England on the eve of the bombardment. But King Albert and Queen Elizabeth refused to leave their kingdom. Until the end of the war they lived in a small villa in the tiny sea- coast village of La Panne — all that was left of Free Belgium. There the Germans did not molest them, perhaps because the queen was a Bavarian princess.
Peter, who was not afraid of anything, insisted that she was going to stay in Antwerp for the last inning. But I finally convinced her that it would be folly to remain, for as an enemy alien she would be interned and sent to Germany. So Thompson and I stood on a quay beside the Scheldt and watched her fluttering handkerchief until her steamer was lost to sight. A very gallant lady.
The St. Antoine, so crowded and noisy a few hours before, had become as silent and gloomy as a tomb. Only three persons remained in it — Thompson, an octogenarian caretaker, and myself. Shortly after the bombardment began a German shell destroyed the water main which supplied the hotel, but this did not perturb us, for we had moved our bedding into the wine cellars, two floors underground and among the finest in Europe. Here we lived for four days on cold food eaten by candlelight, surrounded by bins of rare vintages. Though I actually did brush my teeth with Chateau Yquem and tried to shave in champagne, neither was satisfactory for toilet purposes and I asked the caretaker if he couldn't find us some mineral water. Presently he appeared from some far corner of the cellars lugging a case which, he said, had been left at the hotel many years before by a very rich American guest. It was labeled "Poland Spring, Me. U.S.A." and addressed to "J. Pierpont Morgan, Esqre."
On the afternoon of October 10 the Germans entered the battered city, sixty thousand men passing in review before General von Beseler, the army commander, and Admiral Schroeder, the military governor, who, surrounded by a brilliant staff, sat their horses before the royal palace. But the victors might as well have held their triumphal parade in ruined Babylon, for there were no spectators. Thompson and I viewed the spectacle from the American Consulate in the Place de Meir, which is the Broadway of Antwerp. The consul general and his wife had left the city early in the bombardment, but we were admitted to the consulate by the Belgian caretaker, who seemed relieved to see us. I told him to hang out the largest American flag, which he did, so that when the Germans came tramping in, their bands playing "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles," the Stars and Stripes were the only colors displayed in the mile-long thoroughfare, which had blossomed with bunting a few days before. The State Department people were scandalized by my presumption in showing the flag, but after all it was my flag just as much as theirs and I didn't like the idea of hauling down our colors.
The Germans could hardly have expected a warm reception in the city they had besieged and shattered, but neither could they have been prepared for such an ominous silence. The streets were absolutely deserted; every door was barred, every window shuttered. Their triumph fell as flat as a circus that had come to town the day before it was expected.
For five hours the mighty host goose-stepped though the empty canyons of brick and stone. Battalion after battalion, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade swept past until our eyes ached from watching the gray-green ranks under the slanting lines of steel. At the head of the long column rode a detachment of field police on sleek and shining horses. After them a squadron of uhlans, black-and-white pennons whipping from their lances. Then solid masses of infantry, the silhouettes of the mounted officers rising above the forest of spiked helmets. Next the field artillery, the cannoneers perched stiffly on the caissons. Then, heralded by a blast of trumpets and a crash of kettledrums, the cavalry: tall cuirassiers, their helmets and breastplates covered with gray linen; hussars in befrogged gray jackets, their busbies bearing the death's- head emblem; dragoons; Jaegers zu Pferd, and more uhlans. This was not all, nor nearly all, for after the mounted troops came Bavarians, Saxons, and Austrians in their distinctive uniforms, and the sailors of the Naval Division, sun-bronzed men with the roll of the sea in their gait. Each unit was headed by its colors and field music, and when darkness fell and the street lights were turned on, the blare of bugles and the rattle of drums and the rhythmic tramp of feet reminded me of torch-light political parades I had seen as a boy at home. But these marchers stood for decision by the bullet instead of by the ballot.
Before the last units had passed I had started writing on the consulate typewriter an account of the bombardment and fall of Antwerp and the entry of the Germans. Though I had a scoop such as comes to a newspaperman only once in a lifetime, the cable and telegraph lines out of Antwerp had been cut by the Germans and there was no way to get my story to the World office in London except via Holland. And the nearest Dutch cable station was some thirty miles away at Bergen-op-Zoom.
My dispatch written, I walked to the royal palace, where the military governor, Admiral von Schroeder, had established his headquarters, and sent in my card. The bearded admiral, though coldly polite, obviously did not like newspapermen or Americans. Had I submitted my dispatch to the German censor? No, I didn't know where to find him. Perhaps, the admiral suggested, I was an English agent trying to transmit military information to the War Office in London. I assured him that I was not English and that my only desire was to inform the American public of a great German victory. But I couldn't convince him. He was adamantine in his refusal to give me a pass to leave Antwerp and ordered me to report to him the following noon.
Tired and depressed, I returned to the St. Antoine, where Thompson was waiting for me with some cold food and a bottle of wine. He made no comment when I told him that the military governor had refused to let me leave the city, but presently he left the room. Half an hour later he returned, pushing a brand-new bicycle.
"What's that for?" I demanded irritably, for I was tired to the point of exhaustion and a slight wound in the back of my neck, originally a mere scratch, had become inflamed and was causing me a good deal of pain.
"It's for you to escape on," replied Thompson.
"Where did you get it?"
"In a hardware store around the corner. The place was closed, but I made the proprietor open up and take the machine out of the window."
"How much did you pay for it?"
"I paid for it with a bon."
(A bon, it should be explained, was one of the pieces of stamped paper, redeemable after the war, which the Germans gave the owners of goods they requisitioned.)
Five years later the bon which Thompson had given the bicycle dealer in Antwerp in 1914 was sent in to the New York World and paid without question.
Though I now had transportation, I felt that my chances of getting through the German lines without a pass were extremely slim. An Englishman captured under such circumstances would quite possibly face a firing party, but I figured that the Germans would hesitate to shoot an American.
After an early breakfast which we prepared ourselves in the hotel kitchen, I pedaled away from the St. Antoine in a butcher boy's outfit also provided by Thompson. My "disguise" consisted of nothing more than a knee-length smock of soiled white linen and a checked cap with the visor behind. Attached to the handle-bars was a basket containing some elderly vegetables from the hotel kitchen. The ensemble must have been convincing, for the sentries posted at either end of the pontoon bridge which the Belgians had thrown across the Scheldt glanced at me casually and waved me on. Having gained the east bank of the river without being halted and questioned, I headed north through a squalid working-class suburb toward Holland.
Though well into October, it was one of the hottest days of the year and soon I was drenched with perspiration. Presently the muscles of my legs and thighs began to ache intolerably from the unaccustomed strain, for many years had passed since I had ridden a bicycle. Moreover, the machine Thompson had requisitioned badly needed greasing. Finally, the open wound in my neck, inflamed by dust and sun, had become hellishly painful. The pedaling grew harder and harder, the day hotter and hotter, the bicycle zigzagged crazily. Then, just as I was entering the little frontier town of Capelle, the machine went out from under me, I sprawled on the pave and everything went black.
I wasn't out for long. When I came to I was flat on my back beside the highway and an old peasant woman was washing my face with cold water. A little crowd of curious villagers were gathered in a circle, staring down at me. Someone gave me a drink of schnapps, which completely revived me although it almost burned out the lining of my throat.
"Does anyone here speak English?" I asked, sitting up.
"Ja, Meester," replied a big fellow wearing a blue jersey with the legend in white letters "Red Star Line" across the front. "Ay spik Engleesh, French, High Dutch, Low Dutch, German, Swedish, Eyetalian. What you want?"
"I want a horse and carriage to get to Bergen-op-Zoom."
"No horses left in Capelle, Meester. All stole by verdammte Germans."
"I got a horse," broke in another villager, who, it turned out, had once lived in Brooklyn. "And a rig. I hid them so the Germans couldn't find them."
"Let's see them."
The man disappeared to return shortly leading a gaunt, sway-backed, flea-bitten gray which must have been older than I was. The aged beast had every ailment to which an equine is subject — thrust, spavins, splints, ringbones; it was over on its knees, blind in one eye, and lame in one leg. The vehicle which was hauled out for my inspection — a ramshackle victoria with disked wheels, moth-eaten cushions, and a cracked leather top — was of about the same vintage as the horse and in about the same condition.
"I'll give you a thousand francs for the outfit," I said. A thousand Belgian francs were then equivalent to fifty dollars, which was double what the horse and carriage were worth, but I was too tired to bargain. And added, "With the bicycle thrown in."
"Done!" said the Fleming from Brooklyn. "And for another fifty francs I'll drive you to Bergen-op- Zoom."
Having fortified my drooping spirit with a quarter-loaf of black bread, a piece of sausage, and another drink of schnapps, I boarded the carriage and dropped wearily on the moth-riddled cushions. The former owner clambered onto the box, the assembled townsfolk gave us a little cheer, and with a crack of the whip, to which the venerable equine paid no attention, we ambled off toward Holland. At the Dutch border the frontier guards glanced at my American, passport and motioned us on, but before we had gone another kilometer the horse stopped, reeled, shook violently as though with ague, and dropped dead in its tracks from blind staggers.
Though I had a splitting headache and a high fever, I had to walk the remaining nine miles to Bergen-op-Zoom because there was no other means of transportation. I had plenty of company, however, for the road was crowded with refugees. It took me about three hours to reach the immaculate little town at the confluence of the Scheldt and the Zoom, which was pretty fair walking for a tired and feverish man.
As I didn't dare to longer neglect the wound in my neck, which was badly inflamed, I asked my way to an apothecary's, or, if you prefer, a drugstore. It was crowded with sick and wounded refugees; the sawdust-covered floor was littered with discarded bandages and dressings. The druggist spoke no English and I no Dutch, so when my turn came I turned my back on him and pointed to the gaping hole in my neck. Without a word he picked up from the sawdust-covered floor a gobbet of cotton wool, drenched it with undiluted iodine, grasped me by the hair, yanked my head forward, and clapped the dripping pad, sawdust and all, on the raw wound. It was pretty drastic treatment and the pain was excruciating, but the doctors in England told me that it had probably saved my life.
Though staggering from fever and exhaustion, I almost ran to the telegraph station. I shoved my typewritten dispatch, which ran to more than two thousand words, through the wicket to a sullen clerk, who glanced at it languidly.
"It's too long for us to handle," he said at length. "You can send it from Rotterdam."
"By God," I exclaimed, "you'll either send it off at once or I'll telephone The Hague and report you to the Minister of Communications. And I want it sent at quadruple rates, to take precedence of everything."
"The tolls at quadruple rates," he said, after counting the words, "will be about eighteen hundred gulden. And they must be paid in gold."
Then that Dutch telegraph clerk got the surprise of his life, for I unbuckled my chamois money belt, which I had worn since early morning, and counted out the equivalent of eight hundred dollars in American eagles and British sovereigns. But, though the clerk probably had never seen so much gold at one time, he was taking no chances. While I fumed impotently he sent for the local jeweler, who spent an hour testing every last goldpiece with a file and hydrochloric acid.
But my story of the fall of Antwerp reached New York in time to catch the first edition, appearing on the front page of the World under a four-column headline.
Part 2
In covering the invasion of Belgium I had incredibly good luck. Thanks to the friendship of M. Vandervelde, I enjoyed the confidence of the government, which afforded me extraordinary facilities for gathering news. Provided by the military authorities with a car, a driver, and a laissez-passer, I could move about as I pleased, my big gray Minerva with the American flag fluttering from the hood becoming a familiar sight along the Belgian front. And, so far as I am aware, no other American correspondent was permitted to accompany the Belgian forces in the field, at least during the early months of the war.
But things were quite different in the early spring of 1915, when, Belgium having been completely occupied, I had perforce to transfer my journalistic activities to France. It was like moving from a small, friendly community to a large metropolis. In Belgium, due to circumstances which were not of my making, I was a fair-sized frog in a small puddle. But in France I was a small frog in a large lake.
The French are by nature a suspicious race, and if the war correspondents in France were not actually mistrusted, they were closely and constantly watched. Under no circumstances were we permitted to go up to the front or, indeed, into the zone of the armies, unless dry-nursed by a conducting officer. About once a fortnight the Press Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs arranged three-day excursions to certain sectors of the front for small parties of correspondents, which usually included a visiting V.I.P. These personally conducted trips were so carefully supervised, however, so cut and dried, that stories sent from France were lacking in human interest.
Later on, probably due to Lord Northcliffe's powerful influence with the French Foreign Office, the strict supervision to which I had been subjected was sensibly relaxed and I was permitted to move about pretty much as I pleased under the ciceronage of Count Gerard de Ganay, a retired captain of chasseurs d'Afrique who was married to one of the greatest heiresses in France. Evidently he had been instructed to allow me as much latitude as was consistent with military security, and nearly every week we slipped away by car to some sector of the front usually barred to correspondents. Naturally this did not popularize me with my colleagues, but I saw no reason to decline such favors.
Throughout 1915 and most of 1916 I made my headquarters at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, occupying one of the little apartments on the top floor, its small terrace enclosed by a hedge, overlooking the Place de la Concorde. Late one night in the summer of 1915 I was awakened by the telephone.
"De Ganay speaking," said a voice. "If you can be ready at six o'clock tomorrow morning we'll take a little trip. I can say nothing more over the phone. And don't mention it to anyone. It's very hush-hush."
"We are going to the Champagne," he told me as the big army car sped east. "They are getting ready for a big push, and the president and the premier are coming down to review the troops that will take part in it. Orders reached me at midnight to take you out to see it. All I know is that they came from the very top."
After two hours of fast driving the roads became increasingly congested with troops. Our destination was the tiny hamlet of Auberive, which stands on the edge of a great undulating plain, its surface broken by occasional low hills and ridges, amid which meandered the Marne. This, de Ganay told me, was the great maneuver ground of Chalons. We were expected, for a waiting staff officer bade us leave the car and follow him to the summit of a low hill, from which we looked down upon a vast natural parade ground formed by the flat valley floor. Fifty yards down the slope, at the edge of the plain, a couple of guidons planted in the ground and a few troopers of the Republican Guard marked the place where the president and the accompanying bigwigs would take the salute.
Presently two army cars, escorted by cavalry, drove up and an infantry band burst into the "Marseillaise." I recognized the four men — two civilians and two officers — who took their places at the reviewing point. They were the four greatest men in France. The black-bearded, sour-faced man at the right, distinguished by his singular getup — a chauffeur's whipcord jacket and breeches, black leather gaiters, and a yachting cap — was Raymond Poincaré, President of France. I didn't need to be told that the elderly man with shaggy white hair and a walrus mustache was Europe's greatest statesman — Georges Clemenceau, "the Tiger," Premier of France. The stoutish officer in the gold-laced kepi with the cluster of stars on the sleeve of his dark blue tunic was, of course, the hero of the Marne, Marshal Joffre. The other officer, whose uniform was of the recently adopted horizon blue, was slender, trim, very erect and alert. It was the first time that I had seen General Ferdinand Foch, who commanded the Northern Army group. At that time he was not widely known abroad; three years were to pass before he assumed supreme command of all the Allied armies fighting in France.
Although the Tiger was much older than his companions, he appeared to be the most vigorous, always gesticulating and moving about. Catching sight of de Ganay and me standing on the hillside, he spoke briefly to an aide, who hastened toward us. He told us that the premier wished us to join him. To this day I don't know why he singled me out, but he greeted me with marked cordiality.
"You are Alexander Powell," he said, shaking hands and addressing me in faultless English, for he had spent several years in the United States as a teacher and journalist. "I have read your dispatches from Belgium in the English papers. You certainly gave the Germans hell. I'm surprised that they let you leave the country."
"They didn't," I told him. "I left without permission."
The premier presented me to President Poincaré, a dour, un-communicative man. To Marshal Joffre, a jovial Santa Glaus type with twinkling eyes, pink cheeks, and a bulging waistline. And to General Foch, grave and preoccupied but extremely courteous. I still didn't understand the reason for my extraordinary good fortune. Here was I, an obscure American writer, chatting with the four most famous living Frenchmen.
Presently, with a blare of massed bugles and clatter of drums, the march-past began. There were, I think, eight war-strength divisions, which was a lot of men. Horizon blue had not then become general in the French Army and the majority of the troops wore the uniforms of Napoleon Ill's time — the line infantry in blue tunics with madder-red trousers and epaulettes; the Zouaves in tasseled caps, braided jackets, and baggy, brick-red pantaloons; the dragoons in gleaming helmets from which streamed long horsehair plumes. It was a colorful and stirring scene, but it wasn't nearly as impressive as the masses of Germans in monotonous feld grau whom I had seen in Belgium.
Having noted that I wore slung about my neck an expensive German camera which I had bought in Antwerp, M. Clemenceau insisted that I stand in the reviewing line and to my embarrassment made room for me between himself and President Poincaré. As the dragoons passed in a whirlwind of dust, steel, and streaming plumes I pressed the shutter release, but there was no answering click, only a whirring sound. I closed the camera in disgust; such a chance would never come again.
"What's the matter?" asked the premier.
"I'm afraid that the shutter is broken," I told him.
President Poincare, overhearing my answer, said sourly:
"Que voulez vous avec un appareil Allemand?"
My dispatches were now appearing regularly in the London Daily Mail and the proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, whom I had never met, wired me an invitation to spend a weekend with him in London. I arrived in London shortly after noon, and the famous publisher met me at Euston in his Rolls.
"I want a long talk with you about conditions on the Continent," he said, "but I also must have some exercise, so we'll combine the two by spending the afternoon on Hampstead Heath. You can talk while we walk. That will give you an appetite for dinner."
I didn't tell him that I already had an appetite, having had no lunch.
Hampstead is an area of London with which I was unfamiliar.
The Heath, about one-third the size of New York's Central Park, is a rolling, grassy tract with patches of woodland and several small lakes. I had assumed that we would stroll leisurely — but nothing of the sort. Taking my arm, Northcliffe, a man of enormous energy, set out as though we were engaged in a walking match, firing question after question at me as we hustled along. He wanted "inside stuff," rumors, gossip, about Clemenceau, Poincare, Millerand, Joffre, Petain, Nivelle, Foch. When we returned to the car at nightfall, having walked nearly ten miles I estimated, I was mentally exhausted.
Northcliffe was a charming and considerate host, and at times was almost boyish in his high spirits. Then would come periods of black depression, when he feared that he was going blind or losing his mind and refused to see his friends. Though he was surrounded by yes-men, I never hesitated to disagree with him, which perhaps was the reason he once offered me an editorship. He asked with a show of irritation why I declined it.
"So long as you see me only occasionally I am a novelty," I told him. "You find me interesting and amusing and like to talk to me. But were I in your employ and were you to see me six times a week, you'd soon become bored and fire me." "I guess you're right," he said.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, I never felt that Northcliffe was a great man. He had a remarkable mind and a genius for knowing what the public wanted, but, like William Randolph Hearst, with whom I had a disillusioning experience the following year, he was often ruthless in the means he employed to gain his ends, and had no moral scruples when engaged in a fight. Though in many respects he and Hearst were remarkably alike, Northcliffe was the bigger man.
Once, while staying with him in London, Northcliffe sent me a note by his valet while I was shaving:
"The Great Man will see you at the War Office at four-fifteen this afternoon."
Making my way through the gloomy corridors of Whitehall, I presented myself to the War Minister's principal A.D.C. — a Colonel Fitzpatrick, I think — punctually at the hour named. He showed me into a large office overlooking the Horse Guards' Parade. Seated at a desk was a man whose features were familiar wherever newspapers were known, the hero of Omdurman and the idol of England — Earl Kitchener of Khartoum.
In the closing years of his life Lord Kitchener was not physically attractive. His features and skin were coarse, his face was very red, and when he scowled, which he did habitually, one became painfully aware that he was cross-eyed..
His batman brought in a tea tray and set it on the field marshal's desk.
"Have some tea?" he demanded gruffly.
"No thank you, sir."
"Why not?"
"Well, sir," I replied, "a countryman of mine named Mark Twain, of whom you may have heard, once remarked that tea was an affront to luncheon and an insult to dinner."
"And he was goddam well right," growled Kitchener. "We drink the stuff because of our blasted climate."
I was in Italy in May, 1915, when the Italian Government denounced the Triple Alliance and entered the war on the side of the Entente. Newspaper work in the peninsula was very difficult, for Italy had the most virulent case of spy-fever in Europe and all foreign correspondents were suspected of being enemy agents. Early in 1916, however, due to the representations of the Italian ambassador in Washington, Count Macchi di Cellere, and to the American ambassador in Rome, Thomas Nelson Page, the Comando Supremo finally recognized the value of favorable publicity and gave me a laissez-passer good for the 450 miles of the Italian front, which was longer than the French, British, and Belgian battle lines combined.
On this occasion I was accompanied by an American friend, James Hazen Hyde, then a resident of Paris. Most of the Americans who are old enough to remember Hyde in his gaudiest days have an erroneous concept of him. They still think of him as the tall, slim playboy with the pointed beard who, just out of Harvard, inherited from his multimillionaire father the control of a great insurance company, who drove a coach and four from the old Holland House on Fifth Avenue to Georgian Court, George Gould's estate at Lakewood, New Jersey, and who, in honor of the French actress, Rejane, gave a fabulous costume ball which for years was the talk of the town.
Whatever his youthful extravagances and indiscretions, Hyde, whom I have known for nearly a third of a century, has long since outgrown them. A sober, serious-minded and erudite person, he is an authority on art and European politics, a member of the Institut de France, the founder of the exchange professorships between Harvard and the Sorbonne, and a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. He managed to obtain from the Italian Government permission to accompany me, and I could not have found a more interesting and congenial companion. He took with him his pint-sized English valet named Mew, who cut a singularly incongruous figure on the Alpine front in his black coat, striped trousers, and bowler.
Protocol required us to go first to Rome to call on the Minister of War, who told us that rooms had been reserved for us at the Hotel Croce di Malta in Udine, sixty miles northeast of Venice, which was the headquarters of General Cadorna, the Italian commander-in-chief.
From a forward trench Hyde and I witnessed the crossing of the Isonzo by the Bersaglieri and Alpini and were among the first civilians to enter Gorizia, which was still under heavy Austrian shellfire. We were accompanied by our conducting officer, Captain Pirelli, Italy's greatest tire manufacturer, and by Signer Ugo Ojetti, the noted art expert, who had been charged with the preservation of historical monuments and works of art in the war zone. It was his business to save from injury all paintings and sculptures that were worth saving and to ship them to a place of safety after ticketing and cataloguing them.
In the eastern environs of Gorizia, within the Italian lines but exposed to enemy fire, was an imposing chateau, the property of an Austrian nobleman who owned one of the finest private collections of paintings in Europe. The pick of the pictures were in the great ballroom, whose French windows were within easy range of the Austrian snipers hidden on a wooded hill. No sooner had we set foot in the room than a bullet shattered the crystal chandelier over our heads. But, instead of retreating as Hyde and I did, the famous art critic dropped to the floor, where he was out of the line of fire, and, crawling about on his hands and knees, or sometimes lying flat on his back, scrutinized the canvases through his monocle.
"That's an Allori," he called to his assistant, "and there are not many of his works extant. Be sure to take it down after dark. The next one looks like a Bordoni, though I can't be certain in this light. That small picture on the north wall is a Correggio and a good one, though not of his best period perhaps. We will take it, of course. The baron claims that that picture over the fireplace is a Botticelli and he is said to have paid a lot of money for it. But let him keep it. It's a fake."
My most terrifying experience during the four years of the first World War was in the Alto Adige sector of the Italian front. In some respects this was the toughest sector between the English Channel and the Adriatic, for all about rose the great peaks of the Dolomite and Carnic Alps, the soldiers frequently fought at two miles above sea level, and the cold was intense.
I had heard so much of a certain artillery position on a mountaintop between Bolzano and Innsbruck that I obtained permission to visit it. The only way to reach this isolated and icebound outpost on the roof of Europe was by a teleferica which the Italians had stretched across a rock- walled chasm nearly half a mile wide and about a mile deep.
A teleferica, it should be explained, is a means of transportation commonly employed in the High Alps. It consists of an endless cable running between two drums and operated by a stationary motor. Suspended from the cable and moving with it were two carriers, shallow iron trays about the size of coffins, one carrier going over as the other came back. These contrivances made it possible to send men, food, and ammunition to otherwise inaccessible spots and to bring back the wounded.
The carriers travel Tat the rate of about four miles an hour, so that to traverse approximately half a mile of space would take about eight minutes. But eight minutes can seem interminable when you are swinging between land and sky in a tray with sides only a few inches high. Though I am not subject to giddiness, I heartily dislike dangling over great heights. The Alpini officer who accompanied me was anxious to cross before the sun dissipated the dense mist rising from the valley. I understood his anxiety when he explained that the Austrians had a heavy battery four or five miles down the valley and that when there was no mist they frequently shelled the carriers on the teleferica, which at that distance looked like the moving targets in a shooting gallery.
The trip across was without incident, the mist being so dense that we seemed to be enveloped in a fleecy cloud. The artillery commander proudly showed us his battery, the highest in Europe he thought, the great guns, hauled to their lofty positions by hundreds of men with block and tackle, peering from embrasures chopped from the solid ice. Through a powerful telescope I was studying the trench-scarred mountain slopes which lay spread below me like a map in bas-relief when an Italian battery off to the west suddenly set up a deafening clamor, and on a hillside, miles away, I could see the shell bursts. They looked liked gigantic white peonies with orange centers. The cannonade continued for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then, from an Austrian position beyond the Corinthian border, came a mighty, earth-shaking bellow. It was the angry voice of the Holy Roman Empire.
After a welcome drink of some fiery liqueur in the ice cavern which was the officers' mess, we climbed into the carrier for the return trip across the gorge, which was still filled with mist. We were almost over the middle of the abyss when the engine on the farther bank began to splutter, like a motorcar that has water in its carburetor, gave a few gasps and gurgles, and then fell silent, leaving our carrier swaying gently above a mile of emptiness. Presently a voice, amplified by a megaphone, penetrated the mist. It was the engineer officer in charge of the teleferica.
"He says," my companion translated, "that the motor has broken down but that they will have it going again in a moment. There is nothing to worry about."
It proved to be a very long and uncomfortable moment, for the metal floor of the carrier was coated with ice, our legs became cramped because there wasn't room enough to stretch them out, and we couldn't smoke because we had used all our matches. These were only trivial discomforts, however, compared with the danger that threatened us a few moments later. For without warning the bright lances of the sun, rising above the eastern horizon, dissipated the morning mist as one wipes off the steam on a bathroom mirror. We were left swinging helplessly in mid-air in full view of an Austrian battery a few kilometers down the valley.
"This isn't so good," remarked the conducting officer. "The Austrians will be dropping some shells in our vicinity if the fellows tinkering with the motor don't hurry."
And, sure enough, a moment later something came screeching over with the wail of a lost soul, seemingly so close that we instinctively ducked our heads, to explode a thousand feet or so beyond us with a crash that awoke a myriad echoes.
"That one was over," my companion commented. "The next one will be short. Then, when they have bracketed us — kaput."
As he predicted, the next shell was short. The third would certainly be uncomfortably close, for our carrier made a clearly defined target. It was hard on the nerves to await the next shell when we knew that we could do nothing to escape it. But just then, heaven be praised, there was an encouraging shout from the farther bank, the motor coughed, chortled, burst into a steady chug- chug-chug, and the cable began to move, our carrier with it. And not a moment too soon, for as the motor hauled us out of range a third shell came yowling up the gorge and burst close to where we had been a few seconds before. The engineer officer who helped me out of the carrier asked if I had been frightened.
"Yes," I told him. "I was frightened as hell."
With the exception of two extended lecture tours in the United States and Canada, I spent nearly thirty months on the Belgian, British, French, and Italian fronts. In the early spring of 1917 I was en route to Salonika to visit the Balkan front when I was notified that the United States would enter the war in a matter of weeks. Though I have since realized that I would have been of far more value to the Allies as a war correspondent, I, like most Americans, wanted to get into uniform at once. So I gave up my jobs with the World and the Northcliffe Press, hastened to Washington, and on the day that the United States declared war I was commissioned a captain in Military Intelligence.
After a few weeks at the Army War College in Washington and a detail as an A.D.C. to H.R.H. the Prince of Udine, who headed an Italian military mission to the United States, I was promoted to major and ordered to proceed to Camp Lewis, near Tacoma, to organize an intelligence school for the gist — "Wild West" — Division, composed of units from the Far West. The divi- sional commander was General Frederick S. Foltz, a veteran of the Indian Wars, who had seen service in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines and had captained the United States Army team at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. A small man, always beautifully turned out, as alert and courageous as a bull terrier, he was the beau ideal of a soldier.
The Army moves in a mysterious way and before I was fairly settled at Camp Lewis I was ordered to France as a liaison officer. I might have been useful in such a capacity, having by that time a wide acquaintance in the Entente armies. I was about to leave for Italy to join the Italian Army as a military observer when I received new orders, this time to proceed to Langres, a picturesque hill town on the Marne, to attend the School of the Line and later the General Staff College. On one of the weekly staff rides my mount, an excitable French mare, reared and fell backward on me, causing a spinal injury which has deteriorated with advancing years.
After the Armistice in November, 1918, and after I had spent two months in the base hospital at Langres, I was ordered to the United States for further treatment. Through an error by a young medical officer in the hospital at Savenay, I was sent home aboard the hospital ship Aeolus, formerly the German liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Not until we were at sea did I learn that the Aeolus was known in the service as the "Nut Ship" and that all of the four hundred or more officers and men aboard except myself were mental cases, or, as they would be called today, "psychos."
Although I was encased in a plaster cast and needed two sticks to navigate, not until the day before we docked at Newport News could I convince the sixty-odd alienists who composed the medical staff that, due to a clerical mistake, I was listed as a mental instead of a spinal case.
"You can't really blame us, Colonel, for not recognizing the mistake," said the chief medical officer. "You see, you were always insisting that you were just as sane as anyone else, and much saner than we doctors, and when we tried to quiet you your language became so violent that we seriously considered putting you under restraint."
from the autobiography of E. Alexander Powell, 'Adventure Road'
