The Kroonland docked in New York City in May, 1912. I left her as abruptly as I had left a prouder service. Three days later, a sorrylooking vagabond, I had applied for enlistment in the United States Army and had been accepted. I was sent to the recruiting camp at Fort Slocum, and under the severe eye of a sergeant began to learn my drill.
It was towards the middle of May that I or rather, "Frank Wachendorf" enlisted. After a stretch of recruit-training at Fort Slocum I was assigned to the Nineteenth Infantry, then at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
I learned my drill shades of Gross Lichterfeldel with extreme ease. That is the only single thing that I was officially asked to do.
But early in my short and pleasant career as a United States soldier something happened which gave me special occupation. My small library was discovered. Among the volumes were Mahan's "Sea Power" and Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" not just the books one would look for among the possessions of a country lout hardly able to stammer twenty words in English. But the mishap turned in my favour. My captain sent for me.
"Wachendorf," he said, "you probably have your own reasons for being where you are. That is none of my business. But you don't have to stay there. If you want to go in for a commission you are welcome to my books and to any aid I can give you."
Thereafter life in the Nineteenth was decidedly agreeable. I set myself sincerely and wholeheartedly the task of winning a commission in the United States Army. I believe I might eventually have won it, too. But Fate revealed other plans for me when I had been an American soldier some nine months.
That winter of 1913, you remember, had been a stormy period in Mexico. Huerta had made his coup d'etat. Francisco Madero had been deposed and murdered. President Taft had again mobilised part of the United States forces on the border, leaving his successor, President Wilson, to deal with a Southern neighbour in the throes of revolution.
The Nineteenth Infantry was ordered to Galveston, Texas. And in Galveston the agents of Berlin suddenly put their fingers on me again. It happened in the Public Library. I was reading a book there one day when a man I knew well came and sat down beside me. We will call him La Vallee--born and bred a Frenchman, but one of Germany's most trusted agents.
"Wie geht's, von der Goltz?" was his greeting.
I told him he had mistaken me for someone else. He laughed.
"What's the use of bluffing?" he asked, "when each of us knows the other? Just read these instructions I'm carrying." He laid a paper before me.
La Vallee's instructions were brief and outwardly not threatening. Find von der Goltz, they bade him. Try to make him realise how great a wrong he was guilty of when he deserted his country. But let him understand, too, that his Government appreciates his services and believes he acted impulsively. If he will prove his loyalty by returning to his duty his mistake will be blotted out.
I read carefully and asked La Vallee how I was expected to prove my loyalty at that particular time.
"You know what it is like in Mexico now," he said. "Our Government has heavy interests there. Your services are needed in helping to look out for them."
"But," I objected, "I am a soldier in the United States Army. You are asking me to be a deserter."
"Germany," said La Vallee, "has the first claim on every German. If your duty happens to make you seem a deserter, that is all right. Frank Wachendorf must manage to bear the disgrace. Speaking of that," he added, carelessly enough, but eyeing me severely, "were you not indiscreet there? Suppose some enemy should find out that you made false statements when you enlisted? I believe there is a penalty."
La Vallee knew that he had me in his power. I had to yield, and was told to report to the German Consul at Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. So in March, 1913, Frank Robert Wachendorf, private, became a deserter from the United States Army and a reward of $50 was offered for his arrest.
Before I crossed the border I had one very important piece of business to attend to, and I stopped in El Paso long enough to finish it. Mexico, under the conditions that prevailed, was an ideal trap for me. As the lesser of two evils I had decided to risk my body there. But I had no mind to risk also what was to Berlin of far more value than my body namely, that document which, a year before, had led to my abrupt departure from Germany and her service.
In El Paso, where I was utterly unacquainted, I had to find some friend in whose stanchness I could put the ultimate trust. Being a Roman Catholic, I made friends with a priest and led him into gossip about different members of his flock. He spoke of a harnessmaker and saddler, one E. Koglmeier, an unmarried man of about fifty, who kept a shop in South Santa Fe Street. He was, the priest said, the most simple-minded, simple-hearted and utterly faithful man he knew.
I lost no time in making Koglmeier's acquaintance, on the priest's introduction, and we soon were on friendly terms. When I crossed the international bridge I left behind in his safe a sealed package of papers. He knew only that he was to speak to no one about them and was to deliver them only to me in person or to a man who bore my written order for them.
I reported to the German Consul in Juarez. He asked me to carry on to Chihuahua certain reports and letters addressed to Kueck, the German Consul there. From Chihuahua Kueck sent me on to Parral with other documents. And a German official in Parral gave me another parcel of papers to carry back to Kueck.
I had no sooner reached Chihuahua on the return trip than I was put under arrest by an officer of the Federal (Huertista) forces, then in control of the city. I asked on whose authority. On that, he said, of General Salvador Mercado. I was a spy engaged in disseminating anti- Federal propaganda. I had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of that, and asked what proofs he had to sustain such charges.
"The papers you are carrying," he said then, "will be proof enough, I think."
Chihuahua was under martial law. I had not the slightest inkling as to what might be in those papers I had so obligingly transported. I had put my foot into it, as the saying goes, up to my neck, the place where a noose fits.
They marched me up to the barracks and into the presence of General Mercado. That was June 23, 1913, at 9 o'clock in the evening.