The German Army of 1887 (III)
Victorian Armies
The following is the third (and final) part of an article written by a British officer who visited the German fortress of Metz in the summer of 1887. The first two parts of the article can be found at the other end of the following links: (I) and (II).
The German salute differs from that in our own service, not merely in its formality, but in its duration, the junior not removing his hand from his head until told to do so. A colonel of a cavalry regiment may be seen standing before a general officer in this manner, and after some little time, the general touches the arm of the colonel, who then resumes the ordinary position of attention. In the German service, although there is great esprit de corps, a still higher feeling is maintained, which may be called esprit d’armée, and the whole of the officers of the German Army consider themselves, and are regarded as, one corps of officers.
When an officer arrives in a garrison, he takes advantage of a parole parade to introduce himself to his future comrades; and he proceeds to each corps and salutes the officers present. Of this process I was once the victim, and my arm aches even now at the remembrance of the ordeal. It was on the occasion of one of my earliest visits that my friend, General von Wright, knowing that I should often come to the fortress, suggested that it would be pleasant for me to be made known as an English officer to the officers quartered there. I readily assented, and the general having first done me the honor of presenting me himself to his brother generals, summoned a staff officer, under whose guidance the ceremony was to be completed.
It may be worth while to mention here that the individual about to be presented was, in the eyes of those to whom he was to be introduced, a very different person from what he was among his brother officers who had accompanied him to Metz, and who now stood watching the process with much amusement. To these he was only a processor, a professor of the Staff College it is true, but that did not prevent them from placing him, like all other officers engaged in military teaching, in the species called “military blokes”, occupying comfortable berths and, more or less, shirking orthodox military duty.
But whilst the view they held on the subject was natural, and possibly the correct one, a very different idea presented itself to the mind of the German officer. The English- man saw a military “frog” swollen out in staff uniform, the German a veritable “bull,” of the finest proportions, for before him was standing a Herr Oberst, a Lehrer of the English Kriegsakademie, and, therefore a picked officer of considerable ability. This pleasant allusion, which the frog meanly did not take trouble to dissipate, was due to the importance attached in the German Army to military education. Teaching is regard by them as professional work of a high order; those who are selected for the duty are good soldiers and able men; and to have adopted this line is no bar to professional advancement, no impediment in the career of the future.
At the Kriegsakademie at Berlin, which corresponds to our Staff College at Sandhurst, officers on the headquarters staff deliver lectures and on the roll of the past professors of the Akademie are names which are now to be found in the forefront of the staff of the German Army. “Sorry to see you here,” were the words addressed, in our hearing, by a very great official to an able officer whom he met as an instructor at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. “Glad you have come to give these youngsters the benefit of your brains,” would have been the remark of von Moltke or von Blumenthal, under similar circumstances.
On the parade to which I have referred were gathered officers of some sixteen different corps. The introduction was first made to the colonel, and after a few remarks had been interchanged, accompanied by a series of bows and salutes, this officer would, in some instances, call together his officers, and with them the process was repeated. It was the sense of my wrongly-acquired dignity in the eyes of these officers, backed up by thoughts of draughts of Bieri de Baviere [Italian for “Bavarian beer”] awaiting me at the hotel after the ceremony, carried on under a broiling sun, was over, that alone carried me through.
In social life, as already mentioned, the retention of respect due to rank is most remarkable. There used to be, overlooking the Moselle, an open-air café, frequented by officers and their families. If a senior officer passed in, up rose the officers at the tables and saluted him, no matter how confidential and interesting was the conversation in which they were engaged with the lady by their side. If a junior officer entered, intent on reaching the object of his affections at the farther end of the café, his feelings must have resembled those of a Tantalus, owing to the number of stoppages and delays in his progress, due to the salutes he had to give, and for the acknowledgement of which he had to wait patiently - at all events outwardly.
A ludicrous instances of this stiffness occurred one evening when we were entertaining General von Wright and some officers at dinner at the hotel. One of our expected guests, a lieutenant, arrived late, after we had sat down, and he sent in word to us that he had come. We told the waiter to ask him in, and as he entered we naturally turned to greet him; but to our astonishment he took not the slightest notice of his hosts, but remained standing two yards from the table at attention, with his eyes fixed on another of our guests, the general, and it was not till the general had acknowledged his presence that our newly arrived guest would have anything to say to us.
At another of our little dinners there was present a staff officer, who had told us he had an engagement later on in the evening, and that he could only come if we would excuse him remaining late. About nine o’clock we told him that we hoped he would not think it necessary to remain if he wished to go; he assented, but instead of leaving, he spoke across the table to a senior German officer present, and asked for permission to leave; when, to our bewilderment the senior officer demurred to our own guest going, and it was not until the matter had been explained to the German that he was allowed to depart.
All this etiquette may seem, to an Englishman, absurd and ridiculous, but if it be a fault it is assuredly a fault on the right side. But formal and onerous as the conditions under which German military social life is carried on appear to the Englishman, undoubtedly there is plenty of real fun to be found in it by those who are so fortunate as to penetrate beyond its outskirts; and of the existence of this an account of a “guest night” in a cavalry regiment, to which we were hospitably invited, will be tolerably good evidence.
The barracks where our hosts were quartered are very fine newly erected buildings on the left bank of the Moselle, and there we arrived at the somewhat early hour fixed for dinner, 5.30 P.M.. The mess-house, or Kasino, as it is called, is similar to our own; mess-room and ante-room, and quarters for the junior officers, but these are furnished at Government expense. It was evident from the large number of officers already assembled, that we were in for a “big” night, and no small amount of time was expended in the inevitable introductions. This over, we were soon seated at table, and not many minutes had passed before the ceremony of “taking wine” began - now nearly fallen into disuse in our own messes, but of the horrors of which those of us who joined the service in the last generation have a lively recollection.
My own “first night” was recalled at once to my mind, by a laughing intimation from the adjutant, who sat on my right, that although it was the correct thing to drain the glass in response to each invitation, yet compliance with the custom might be left to my discretion. “Our fellows want to get your people under the table,” he added in the frankest manner possible, as a perfect storm of challenges to take wine was rained on each member of our party by our hosts and the other guests in succession.
I took stock of my party; there was my old friend and brother professor, Bill R., calmly responding to each challenge, and not turn- ing a hair. On young B., who sat opposite me, and who met the storm as coolly as he had stood under the showers of bullets in Afghanistan, the liquor, certainly of the best, had no effect whatever; and the rest of the party seemed quite safe. In fact, before the evening was over, the attack had decidedly not the best of the fray. As regards myself, wine and I mutually hate each other, so I profited by the adjutant’s hint, yearning for the end of the entertainment when the “bock beer” would make its appearance, for I knew that I could hold my ground there.
Justice done to the dinner, during which the noise and joking was gradually getting louder and louder, we adjourned to the verandah overlooking the pleasant gardens in which the bank had been playing during dinner. Soon the band struck up a waltz, and in a few minutes there we were, English and Germans, the latter in the tightest of tunics, and wearing swords, whirling away at railroad speed. Then a ballet by two German officers followed, and the senior officer though it by this time necessary to apologize to me for the frivolity displayed, adding that as he was only temporarily in command, he did not like to interfere. I assured him that we English officers enjoyed the fun thoroughly, and on it went more furiously than ever.
In one of the pauses a Brunswicker or Hessian, who had evidently been worsted in the wine drinking assault at dinner, went up to B. and coolly said to him, “What do you think these Germans think of you?” B. was slightly staggered by the question, but man- aged to blurt out something neat and appropriate, whereupon his interrogator continued, “I will tell you, they detest you.” Poor B. was utterly taken aback, and seizing on the German officer nearest, plunged into a waltz just begun.
I have often heard it asserted that German officers dislike us; it is quite possible they may look down on us professionally; but, so far as my experience ges, they never lose an opportunity of showing us hospitality and friendliness.
And now it was nearing 9 o’clock, and I suggested ,therefore, that it was time to go home. “Oh, not yet, Colonel,” said the cheeriest of cheery fellows, Lieutenant Colonel von Blumenthal since, alas, gathered to the majority, “we must have the march past first, if you please.” “Certainly,” I replied, “nothing I should like more than the march past.”
[In the original, the von Blumenthal is called “Lieutenant.” As, however, he is elsewhere identified as the commanding officer of the cavalry regiment, we must assume a typographic error in the original. The expression “gathered to the majority” means “died.”]
But what on earth he meant, or how the stiffest of parade movements was compat- ible with the wild spirits displayed by all present, I could not imagine. Some orders were shouted out, and immediately the bank below fell in in file, and moved off along the garden paths, playing the regimental march, and accompanied on each side by mess waiters, carrying the lamps from the mess- room table.
The crowd in the verandah was lessening, and, looking over the balustrade, I saw officers and guests following two and two, headed by “Bill R.” arm in arm with a German and showing himself equal to the occasion by marching with the parade step. Soon I stood alone, a block half finished in my hand. The Adjutant came up and offered me his arm, which I at once took, at the same time asking him what I was to do with the beer. “Take it with you,” was his solution of the question, and so I did, with as much dignity as I could command.
Having traversed the gardens I thought the procession had come to an end. “Not yet, if you please, Colonel,” (he seemed to refer everything to me for approval,) “though the casino first”; and up the steps we went, still headed by the band, through the mess premises, and out along the verandah of the square of the barracks, from the doors of which, opening on to the verandah, the moon came out to witness the fun. And now as we descended into the square, the band moved off to the left, the Adjutant hurried me (fortunately I had deposited the bock in the verandah) to an imaginary saluting point opposite them, guests and hosts formed up in line and “marched past” the “boss” of the evening, adjourning to the casino for a fresh supply of “Baviere.”
“One moment,” said the adjutant, as we began bidding our hosts farewell, and the band played the cavalry retreat; and then, after a very brief pause, there burst forth one of the most exquisite evening hymns I ever heard, hushing for the moment the sounds of revelry. It is curious, this introduction of religion into the everyday life of a German soldier; he sings a hymn of praise on the battle-field when surrounded by the dead and dying who have fallen under his sword, and also after a mess dinner where the present has certainly been oblivious of the future. And with the sacred melody yet in our ears we left the barrack for home, amidst loud cheers given on both sides.
The next time that we dined at this mess in a subsequent year, a change had come o’er the spirit of the dream; a colonel with a tighter hand was in command, poor von Blumenthal was away ill, and, therefore, the “march past,” which was his own special importation from his old cuirassier regiment, had no place in the proceedings which, if (as, indeed, they were) characterized by the same spirit of hospitality as shown on former occasions, were perhaps a little less enjoyable and entertaining.
Source: Colonel Lonsdale Hale, “Glimpses of German Military Life”, Colburn’s United Service Magazine, No. 715, (June 1888).