Queer people

I suppose that some day or other one of the assistant provost-marshals who served in France will be moved to publish some of his experiences. Most of his work was dull and uneventful, but every now and then there flared up one of those sordid little tragedies which human nature, under the stress of war, is apt to give out. One summer day in 1916 the A.P.M. at Boulogne received from an Australian escort a grimy envelope on which nothing was written but, ‘The A.P.M., Boulogne. Herewith Jim Perry.’ (Perry was not the name.) He asked why he should receive Jim Perry, and what Jim Perry had done. About this the escort knew nothing at all. All he had to do was to deliver Jim Perry and bring back a receipt for his body. For the rest, the A.P.M. had better ask Jim Perry himself. Perry, when produced, turned out to be a well-educated young man born in South Africa, with the marks about him of having undergone a rather strenuous experience, but in this there was nothing unusual as far as the clients of an A.P.M. were concerned.

Jim Perry’s story deserves to live. As soon as he heard that war had been declared he left South Africa in order to join up in England. He was drafted to the Officers’ Training Corps, but finding the corps uncongenial, he deserted and walked off to a certain Australian battalion which was then training in England for the Front. There was a free and easy way about the Australians that pleased a fellow-colonial. They welcomed their new recruit, and did not think it necessary to report his arrival to the officers. The privates collected some kind of a kit for him from among themselves, and as a roll-call never seems to have been taken in this particular battalion, Perry was able to serve with them over two months in England, and afterwards to accompany them to France. He was five weeks with them in Abbeville, and then they were moved up to the front line. Here he was with them for five weeks more, and he might have continued to be an Australian soldier until the Armistice but for a mishap. One day the battalion came out of action with a good many casualties and the younger officers organised a spy hunt. The first step was to do what they had never done before—to call the roll, and during this unwonted ceremony it was discovered that they had with them one man more than they ought to have had. Here, obviously, was the spy. Jim Perry was put under arrest, and the subalterns held a consultation. The remedy was obvious. Jim Perry should be shot at sight. They were about to carry out the decision of the meeting when one of them said that he remembered reading somewhere that you never shot a man without reporting first to the colonel, so this formality was complied with, and the colonel, who saw nothing in the verdict of which he disapproved, remembered to have read somewhere that you never shot a man without first reporting to the Brigadier. This was a great disappointment to the subalterns, who were all for action stern and swift.

Now the Brigadier happened to know something about military law, and he pointed out that as no court-martial had been convened and no evidence had been called, whatever else was done no shooting could take place. This annoyed the battalion excessively. The decision came just at a time when they were leaving their rest camp, and they had no intention of taking with them into action an unmasked spy. Perry could not be shot, but he could be left behind, so they took him into a barn, handcuffed his hands and feet round the post which supported the roof, locked the door, and went away. There Perry remained in this extremely uncomfortable position for two whole days, and then the South African angel which watched over him ordained that another Australian battalion should march into the village and require the barn, should break down the door and find Jim Perry. He seemed to want food and water very much, so they fed and watered him, and made a pet of him, and when their turn came to return to the trenches they wanted to take him with them, but here the colonel intervened. To him there seemed to be something irregular about taking a man whom you have found chained to a post into action with your battalion even as a mascot. He reported the occurrence and asked for instructions, and these were that Perry should be sent to the base. It was under these circumstances that an escort of the Good Samaritans had brought him to Boulogne with the grimy envelope.

Even an A.P.M. has a heart, and this one decided to send Perry to England to begin again at the beginning—in other words, to enlist in any regiment that came handy and draw a veil over his past, and as Perry had no money he pulled out of his pocket a £1 note. Perry looked at it dubiously, and said, ‘Money? That’s no use to me, sir. I have plenty of money of my own. What I want is my cheque-book.’ And this turned out to be perfectly true. Perry’s father was a wealthy man, and the son had a banking account.

Later in the War a large number of German army reservists in Spain and South America, and a certain number of German prisoners of war taken on the Russian Front who had escaped from Siberia began to cross from America in the hope of reaching Holland without being recognised at the English port as enemies. It was a regular business with the German Consulate to furnish them with forged passports. They were Swedes, South Americans, and Dutchmen, according to their papers, and they assumed the nationality of the language which they happened to be able to speak. Sometimes we knew when particular persons were coming; at others the naval officers at the ports had to use their own intelligence, and very well they did it. There was one rather pathetic case in which I almost wished that they had been less successful. It was reported from Kirkwall that two of the stokers on a Swedish ship were men of above the ordinary education of stokers, and that they were on their way down to London. I examined them separately. The first gave in rather quickly. He was the last kind of person who could have hoped to pass muster as a stoker. He had not even succeeded in making his hands rough. He was a Viennese reserve captain of artillery, who had relations in Paris, and had been called up straight from the bank in which he was employed. He took his internment as a prisoner of war with perfect philosophy. It was one of the ordinary accidents of war, and he would rather be interned in a British camp than under the appalling conditions that prevailed in Siberia, but it did seem hard to have been taken prisoner twice in the same war after walking some thousands of miles across Asia. I sometimes hear from him still. When I first saw the other man I thought that our boarding officer had made a mistake. He was a sooty, smiling, alert little person, and he slouched into the room with the regular stoker’s lurch. He answered all my questions, and picked out on the map the little village in Sweden where he was born. He talked Swedish with apparent fluency, and his hands were as dirty as any one could expect from a stoker. Nevertheless, we sent him to Cannon Row for further inquiry. Cannon Row was his undoing. He had guessed that his companion in adversity must be in a cell not far from his, and as the place seemed very quiet he thought it safe to call him up in German through the ventilator. He did not know that a German-speaking police officer was in hearing. His companion replied, and the flood-gates of our friend’s eloquence were opened. ‘They got nothing out of me,’ he shouted. ‘They really believe that I am a Swedish stoker. How did you get on?’ (No reply.) ‘The proper way is to bluff them, and if you do it well they will swallow anything.’

When he came before me next morning I told him that he had played his part very well indeed; in fact, that if he ever cared to try his luck upon the stage I was sure that he would make a fortune. He grinned a little uneasily, I thought. ‘And now,’ I said, ‘since the game is up you might wash your face and hands, put on a collar, and write a letter to your friends in Vienna, asking them to send your military uniform in order that we may treat you in internment as an officer.’ His whole manner changed. Instinctively he pulled himself to attention, gave me the name of his regiment and the address of his friends, and before he left the room he clicked his heels, and walked out of it like a trained soldier. To this day he does not know where my information came from.

From Falmouth they sent me one day a curly-headed and rotund young gentleman from Chile. He spoke Spanish like a native, and he was bound for Rotterdam to buy cheap cigars for his firm in Valparaiso. Also he spoke English, which he professed to have learned in New York during the course of his business travels. Unfortunately for him, there had been on the steamer an Austrian woman with whom he had spent much of his time, and just before he was called to go ashore he had been seen to slip into her hand a folded piece of paper. She retired to the cabin to open and read this note, but one of the boarding officers followed her and recovered it. It was a German letter written in pencil, and it said, ‘Whatever you do, you must not reveal the fact that I speak German.’ This note was on my table when he came in for examination, and with me was sitting as Admiralty representative the late Lord Abinger who spoke German fluently. He kept his knowledge in reserve.

The young man was quite charming. He answered all my questions without hesitation; he thought that some generations ago one of his ancestors might have been a German, but he was not well enough versed in the family history to give me full details about this. Many Chileans, he said, had fair curly hair like his and a fresh complexion, because the Chilean sun does not burn the skin as it does in Peru. Yes, he spoke English fluently but not German. It was one of the regrets of his life that he had never learned that language. We gave him writing materials, and set the lamp as he liked it, and then I said, ‘Draw up your chair, and this gentleman will set you a piece of dictation.’ Then Lord Abinger cleared his throat, and dictated the Spanish text of his passport. The handwriting, as I could see, was the same as that of the note. While he was still writing I handed his German note to Lord Abinger who, without break or pause, followed on with the German text. The curly head was not raised. All I could see was a deep flush creeping over the cheek. The hand stopped writing. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you do not seem to be getting on.’

‘The gentleman is dictating in a language I do not know.’

‘He is reading from a letter written by yourself.’

There was a long silence, during which the pencil dropped on the floor, and at last the young man rose wearily from the armchair and said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with me? You have me in your power.’ He was quite ready then to answer questions, and I believed him when he said that his only object in coming over was to do his duty, because he could not bear to have it thrown in his teeth afterwards that he had taken no part in the Great War. He added, philosophically, that he supposed that they could not reproach him if he was interned in an enemy country, and I, looking at his fat hands and his ample proportions, added the comfortable reflection that he would find internment far safer than service in the trenches.

In January 1917, an American boasting the name of Jelks Leroy Thrasher was found on board the Dutch passenger steamer Zeelandia when she put into Falmouth on her way to Holland. Mr. Thrasher was a young, clean-shaven man who had something about him of military courtesy, which scarcely accorded with the account that he was prepared to give of himself. For this reason he was asked to land, and sent to me for an interview. He had quite a marked American accent, and yet there was something about it that did not quite carry conviction. After the usual caution he became even more communicative than before, and was ready to tell me every detail of his past life from his very earliest years. There was something quite uncanny about his memory. He could describe the colour of people’s hair whom he could have known only when he was just out of the perambulator. He was never at a loss for a name, and his elaborate description of Quitman, Georgia, where he said he had passed his early life, would have astonished the residents of that little-known centre. There were, of course, a few discrepancies, and as the examination proceeded he began to show uneasiness. I said at last, ‘Do you know, you are not telling your story very well.’ He looked concerned and bowed—from the waist. I said, ‘Your accent is not quite American, though it is a very good imitation.’ He again bowed, as before, from the waist. What I wanted was a name to put to him, and so we adjourned for luncheon to consider what Germans were at the moment loose upon the world on unlawful pursuits. It happened that about this time the German Government had had occasion to send a direct messenger to New York in connection with the negotiations for landing arms in Ireland, and it was intended, no doubt, that the messenger should afterwards proceed to Holland in the guise of an American. The officer’s name was known to be Captain Hans Boehm. There were several other Germans wandering about, but as this man seemed the most likely I thought I would try him first.

After luncheon Mr. Thrasher resumed his seat, and I again referred unkindly to his American accent, which I pointed out to him was too laboured for an American. At last I said, ‘You are not doing this well, Captain Boehm.’ He looked surprised, but said nothing. ‘No, Captain Boehm, you are not doing it well.’ He smiled and again bowed from the waist. I said, ‘Take, for example, your bow. No American bows like that.’ He laughed and bowed again, and, as he made no objection to being called Captain Boehm, I said, ‘Perhaps I am not quite fair. You had a very difficult part to play, and you played it better than any German officer who has yet sat in that chair.’ That pleased him, and after a little pressing he told me most of his story. He was the son of an official in Alsace, was well-educated, and had spent a good deal of his life in America. During 1916 he was commanding a battery of artillery near Wytschaete, in Flanders, and, on account of his reputation as an American, he had been taken out of the line to be employed upon a special mission. He was now on his way back. He would tell me nothing about the nature of his employment—that we knew from another source—but he did admit that he had met Roger Casement while in Germany. It afterwards appeared that there had been a man of the name of Jelks Leroy Thrasher in Quitman, Georgia, but he was dead. Probably the passport was one of those that had been retained by the German Government on the pretence that it had been lost at the Foreign Office when sent thither for a visa. Captain Boehm was treated as a military prisoner, and told that as soon as his uniform arrived he would be treated as an interned officer. He wrote to his friends from Brixton on 17th January 1917 saying:

‘I wish to emphasise that the treatment meted out to me right throughout has been very good. From Admiral to seamen, all were very kind to me, and the comprehension of the situation was superior. The Admiral said to me, “We have no interest to make difficulties for an enemy who can do us no more harm.” Please bring these lines to the knowledge of my superiors in the General Staff. If you can do a friendly action to an English prisoner do it.’

A great many neutrals used to come in about this time after their journeys in the enemy countries. One of them had had a talk with von Tirpitz. He had called to give the family news of their son, who was a prisoner of war, and while they were at tea von Tirpitz himself came in. He described him as looking like a very untidy old farmer, with socks hanging down over his boots, and chalk marks all over his trousers, but his expression exhaled benevolence quite out of keeping with the fire-eating advice he was giving to the German Government on the subject of submarines. He complained bitterly of the conduct of the Americans in making munitions for the Allies. My friend pointed out that if the Germans would send ships to fetch munitions, as the Allies did, they could be supplied too, and remarked, ‘If you had command of the sea, would you not obtain them from us?’ ‘Of course we would,’ said von Tirpitz.

I have said little about that admirably managed department, the Postal Censorship, because much of its work was necessarily confidential, but there was nothing new about its functions. At the time of the Great Fire the General Post Office was situated in Cloak Lane off Dowgate Hill. There was no Postmaster-General; the service was farmed out, and the lessee at that time was Katharine, Countess of Chesterfield, acting through her agent, Sir Philip Frowde. Under him was the actual postmaster, one James Hickes, whose claim to fame was that he kept the office open throughout the Great Plague, and saved most of the letters on the night of the Great Fire. There was at that time an inventor, Sir Samuel Morland, who, among other inventions, had devised the capstan and the speaking trumpet, and we are told that an apparatus for the opening and rapid copying of letters was among the property that perished in the Great Fire of London. What the machine was that kept Charles II. three hours ‘seeing with admiration and very great satisfaction’ the various operations, that copied a letter in little more than one minute before photography was invented, will never be known because Morland omitted to invite Samuel Pepys to a demonstration and allowed his secret to die with him.⁠[3]

All sorts of queer people came to light through the censorship of letters. One would have thought that during the agonies of war there would have been no time for the innocent forms of internationalism, but it is a fact that in nearly every country in the world one could find international chess-players so detached from public affairs that they were actually conducting games by post in 1917. The Censor stopped a postcard in a foreign handwriting addressed to Spain with the usual chess formulae on its back. The card was tested in every possible way for secret writing, and it seemed so incredible that any one should be playing chess with a foreign antagonist at such a moment that we concluded that a new form of spy communication by means of chess formulae had been adopted by the enemy. After some search we found the writer. He proved to be a young Spaniard, little more than a boy, who lived in a squalid room near Tottenham Court Road with practically no personal effects except a chess-board. He was genuinely astonished at being haled before the authorities. During the day-time he was a waiter at a restaurant, but in his spare moments—and there could not have been many of them—he was conducting twenty-four games of chess by post with antagonists in foreign countries whom he had never seen. He had heard that ‘there was a war on,’ but apparently as long as it did not interfere with his games it was no concern of his.

It was clear that the British Navy was doing its work well. A letter found concealed in a parcel addressed to a German prisoner which was intercepted in January 1917 gave us some very useful information. The writer had been recently repatriated from Wakefield via Stratford, and he gives the following account of what he imagines he saw:

‘We left Stratford in the omnibus on Sunday evening, driving to Charing Cross through London’s dark streets, which are fearfully depressing. We saw a few houses destroyed by the Zeppelins, but it was only here (in Germany) that I got some photographs which show that the whole corner from the Haymarket, Piccadilly, the complete block of residences over the Piccadilly Tube Station had been clean swept away.’

He went on to give minute instructions, based upon his own experience, how gold and other prohibited articles could be smuggled out of the country without interference from the military and the police—a part of his letter which caused us to stop a number of leaks. In the early days of the War a good deal of gold was successfully smuggled out. One German woman had gone to the expense of having a false bottom made to her handbag, which proved on examination to be floored with sovereigns. Its weight was its undoing.

This verbose correspondent was guarded when he wrote about the state in which he found Germany. ‘I will only tell you one thing,’ he wrote: ‘that times are serious; much, much more serious than any one has ever thought. So, for instance, it is in my opinion a direct active meanness if anybody in the camp has had sent to him eatables of any sort, even in the smallest quantities.’