The finals days of a bloody, calamitous year.

Monday, December 30, 1918:

Things have happened pretty lively around here lately. On Wednesday (Dec. 18), Hap and I took two cars down to Speyer to pick up Signor, Kerr, Kirkpatrick and Rority who were on their way back from Paris where they had received D.S.C. for work in the Argonne. It is about a 90 km run down there along the Rhine practically all the way. A beautiful ride though we did make it in the rain. The big places on the way down are Oppenheim, Worms, Frankenthal, and Ludwigshafen. We wasted no time going down in hopes of having plenty of time on our return with the other four boys to take in the points of interest. We arrived in Speyer at 10:30 A.M. and found the boys right away. 

Speyer, 2010

Speyer is quite an interesting little city with somewhat of a past. In earliest historic times, we are told, Speyer was the capital of the Teutonic tribe Nemeter. Then it became the Roman municipal town of Upper Germania and later from the 6th Century under the tribe of the Franks, as the capital of the surrounding district Charlemagne established in Speyer an Imperial Palatinate for temporary residence. Imperial diets were held in the reign of his son Lewis the Pious, and altogether no less than 49 were held between the years 838 and 1570. In 1030, the Emperor Konrad II, the Salic, founded the Cathedral and designated it as the resting place for himself and his successors. Thus Speyer became the burial town of the German Emperors. In 1111 Speyer was granted imperial freedom, but for nearly 200 years there were long and hard fights with the episcopal power until she was recognized as a direct or free Imperial City, and recognized by the bishops, who from the year 610 had resided within her walls. Until 1689 Speyer was the seat of the Reichskammergericht, the Supreme court in the German Empire. In 1689 the city was burned to the ground as ordered by King Louis XIV of France. It was rebuilt in time and then in the Peace of Lunéville, 1801, Speyer, as well as the whole German province on the left bank of the Rhine, was ceded to France. But after the complete overthrow of Napoleon in 1815, the left bank of the Rhine was recaptured once more from the French, and in 1816 the town of Speyer became a stable part of the newly formed Rhine Province belonging to the Kingdom of Bavaria, then the chief town of the Palatinate, and, somewhat later, once more an episcopal see.

Speyer Cathedral, 2010

The Imperial Cathedral was only half destroyed by the fire of 1689. It was patched up to look like the original in the 19th Century by King Lewis the First of Bavaria.  The old tower-gateway is the only other structure which lived through the fire.

We saw all the places, but didn’t stop to go through the cathedral. We six ate at the Hotel Wittelsbach where we were served an excellent 4 mark dinner by an English speaking waiter. 

Worms Cathedral, 2010

By 1:30 P.M. we were on our way back. In Ludiwigshafen we had a blowout. This threw us off schedule, but we did stop in Worms long enough to go through the Cathedral in which Martin Luther was tried and sentenced to prison. It was a dark and gloomy day so the cathedral didn’t show up very well. It is a big clumsy piece of Romanesque architecture. Had another blowout just out of Worms. It was dark before we had the blooming thing fixed. Near Oppenheim we changed another tire getting into camp about 6 P.M., and hour behind schedule. ‘Twas a nice trip, but I should like to do it over again in nice weather.

December 21 - Johnny, Frase and I went over to Weisbaden and saw the town. It’s a nicer place than Mainz -- a bath center, quite cosmopolitan, very clean and modern. It being a Saturday afternoon we couldn’t get into the stores, but the windows looked very attractive. Hope to go over again later.

December 25 - Ten cars went to Darmstadt this morning to get wounded prisoners and return to Mainz. Darmstadt is in the neutral zone so there are no troops there. The prisoners were mostly English and have some mighty hard stories to tell. In Darmstadt after the revolt of the German army and the signing of the armistice they report a very different attitude on the part of the Germans. However, they are firm and set on revenge. Most of them looked pretty well. The day was cold, rainy with flurries of snow and some snow already on the ground. 

We returned to Mainz about 4:30 and hurried into our Xmas clothes. Our dinner was staged at a downtown Cafe and consisted of German barley soup with American bread and German jam for butter; goose or chicken (I had both) with American apple sauce, German potatoes, Brussels sprouts and German cabbage salad; American rice made up into a German cold pudding with German preserved fruits in it; coffee (American) and German cake made with our white flour. We drank French cognac and German champagne. The dinner was excellent, thanks to Sgt. Snader, but we had to break up at 8 P.M. because of the French military laws forbidding German civilian shops to be open after 8 P.M. All civilians must be off the streets at this time.

Limburg, 2010

December 28 - My birthday [Grant's 26th], but I forgot about it until the day was spent. We left Mainz at 8 A.M. for Limburg directly north of here about 80 km and beyond the neutral zone. The day was miserable, cold and wet. The other side of Wiesbaden we struck snow in the hills and chains were necessary. We arrived in Limburg about noon and found we were again to evacuate English prisoners. One of the men I carried had been over here a prisoner for four years and four months. They were the happiest lot I ever saw because they were going back home. Wow! but they had some gruesome tales to tell. In their prison camp we saw a graveyard where 60 Irish prisoners had been starved and then shot because they refused to answer Sir Roger Casement’s call and fight with Germany. We read the names on the crosses above each grave. There is no question but what they are Irish, O’Brien, O’Flanegan, etc. never were German names. It seemed queer to be out of the neutral zone where only German M.P.s guard the streets and conduct traffic.

We reached camp about 11 P.M., after having gotten lost twice, tired, cold and in bad humor. It was a hard trip.

December 29 - At 9 A.M. 20 cars started for Frankfurt on the Main. It was a better day than we have had on our last few convoys-- warm and once or twice the sun actually shone. Frankfurt is a very pretty place, again the other side of the neutral zone. Our load this time was strictly American. The boys had been assembled from various places in Germany by a Swiss major whom they said was very nice and had gone to much trouble in assembling them. Their stores vary somewhat from the others we had listened to in that they had received the best treatment Germany could afford everywhere they had been. We were somewhat astonished when we saw an American boy giving some Union Leader smoking tobacco to some to the German kids who surrounded us the minute we stopped before the hotel in which the boys were staying. When asked about it he remarked, "Oh well, these Germans aren’t so bad after all and they haven’t much tobacco over here." It made us boil all over. Hoodwinked, they were. The Germans had been playing to them and they had fallen for it.

I carried one lad from the 102nd Machine Gun Company who was taken at Seicheprey when we were with them up there. He and Harold Tucker were taken together and had been together up till about 2 weeks ago when in Darmstadt they were separated. Once again I just missed Tucker. He said “Tuck” was looking fine and had been treated like a king.

From Frankfurt the Swiss major led the convoy in a German staff car down through Darmstadt, Bensheim and Weinheim to Mannheim where we left the boys in the charge of a German Red Cross. From here another American section will carry the boys back or down probably to Strasbourg where they will be shipped by train.

Our trip from Darmstadt down to Mannheim was most interesting principally due to the fact that German troops are stationed in both Bensheim and Weinheim. We saw some wounded German soldiers for the first time since we have been on German soil which made a pretty sight for sore eyes. The troops in these towns were very young indeed and didn’t know what to make of our being there.

We left Mannheim at 6:30 arriving in Mainz about 9:15 P.M. -- a good run and excellent day.

Tuesday, December 31:

Slept late and worked on the car. No mail. Miserable weather. Johnny, Frase, Dirk and self went downtown for supper and the evening we spent in the Cafe Paris and playing billiards. Johnny & I beat Frase and Dirk. Very little celebrating in spite of its being New Year’s eve and the Cafes open until 12 P.M. A few French were pretty happy, but as far as we observed everything went along smoothly.