Read Ebook: Delaware; or The Ruined Family. Vol. 3 by James G P R George Payne Rainsford

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 696 lines and 62989 words, and 14 pages

I have often been asked how our prisoners are treated in Germany. The only correct answer to this is that the treatment varies according to the time and place, and the type of German who comes into contact with them.

In 1914 it was generally the same throughout Germany. In those days the treatment was exceedingly bad. Every prisoner taken then has seen or experienced some brutality or insulting behaviour on the part of Germans.

For my part, I, on first becoming a prisoner, was spat at and called all the choice names their musical language can provide. I saw a British soldier, with a shrapnel wound in the back, made to carry a heavy German pack which bumped up and down on the open wound. This fact was remarked upon by a German private soldier, who, more humane than the rest, protested against this treatment. But the Unter-Offizier would not alter his order and the wounded man had to carry his burden for seven miles or more.

When asked for water at Aix-la-Chappelle railway station, by prisoners who had hardly had a drop to drink for two days, and scarcely a scrap of food to eat, I heard the Red Cross "Ladies"! reply--"For an "Engl?nder"? Nein!"

At Cologne station I saw the brute beasts of German officials haul three or four of the most miserable British private soldiers they could find, out of the cattle trucks and place them on the platform to be baited by the populace, comprised largely of women. There were German officers on the platform, so there was no excuse; it could have been stopped instantly by them.

There were many other incidents too numerous to mention, but similar and worse stories will be told by the thousand after the war. The treatment of prisoners has steadily improved since those days. No longer do the Germans openly insult and knock prisoners about to the same extent, except in out of the way places and when they have a particularly cowed and defenceless lot to deal with.

I have heard from officers taken prisoners in 1916, that they were reasonably treated when captured. It is much changed now according to general report.

While waiting at Cologne station for our train for Crefeld, we were locked in a cell under the stairs of the station. Although expecting to receive food here and being told that it was with that object that we had been put in this place, nothing of this kind materialised. However, we had the great honour of being visited by a German general and a young female of high rank, who could speak a little English.

On arrival at Crefeld station a hostile crowd was ready to receive us, and we were hurried as quickly as possible into the trains waiting there, in order to get us away from the attentions of the populace. As it was, two of the eleven officers in my party were hit with sticks, the wielders of which had pushed their way through the escort of German soldiers accompanying us.

We were not sorry to reach the barracks and get away from these demonstrations of the unpopularity of England in this town. Crefeld, a great centre of the silk industry, had suffered heavily by the entry of England into the war.

Once inside the camp we had time to spare for anything we wished to do, which naturally meant food first, sleep next, and after some time a wash and shave.

The barracks of the Crefeld Hussars, now wired in and used as a prison camp, are large and strongly built. The prisoners occupied three large buildings and a fourth smaller one provided mess rooms and canteen, etc.

There was a gravel parade square in the middle of the ground between the buildings; this we used as a place for exercise. This square was a hundred and forty yards long by about eighty yards wide. It made an excellent association football ground when cleared of big stones, and in the summer, by dint of hard labour, we turned it into a number of tennis courts.

Until he got command of Belgium, Von Bissing--the brute responsible for the death of Nurse Cavell--was the general in charge of the particular army command which included Crefeld in its jurisdiction.

On the walls of the prison camp an order signed by Bissing was posted, which informed all the prisoners that they were the inferiors of all Germans, whatever rank they might hold.

The order also warned us against trying to "evade our fate by escaping." It continued, "The guards are earnest men, knowing their duty." This caused the nickname "earnest men" to be given to them.

I wish Bissing could have known how we laughed at his special order. The Boche has no sense of humour or he could never have put a thing like that on the walls for Englishmen to laugh at and ridicule generally.

For the first year or so, only seven officers were allotted to the smaller rooms and fourteen to the larger ones. But these numbers were eventually increased, first to eight and sixteen respectively, and then to nine and eighteen.

At first we had a cupboard each, but later four had to do duty for seven officers. The beds were iron with wooden planks supporting a hard mattress, sometimes filled with straw or wood shavings, which was changed on one or two occasions.

During the first few months we had only small oil lamps for lighting purposes, at a scale of one per seven officers. It was impossible for everyone to read at the same time. We used to sit over the fire for warmth and the three nearest to the lamp could manage to see sufficiently in the evenings to read the few Tauchnitz editions we had been able to purchase through a tradesman, who was allowed into the barracks twice a week.

As nearly all great-coats and waterproofs had been taken away from prisoners at the time of their capture, we felt the effects of the cold pretty considerably. Roll-calls took place at 8 a.m. and 9.30 p.m., generally out of doors. We often went on these roll-calls in the early days with our blankets over our shoulders. A welcome supply of soldiers' great-coats was sent through the American Embassy about Christmas time. During the first winter there were about 250 Russians, 200 French, 120 English and a few Belgian officers in the camp.

That first winter was by far the worst of the three I spent there. We had not got to understand the true nature of the German official reports, and for some time they depressed us.

Parcels began coming in December, but the Germans made us pay duty on them for a time, and as we had very little money in those days, they were not so welcome as they became at a later date, when the duty was removed.

As time went by, conditions in the camp improved, but until the summer of 1915 we had great difficulty in getting permission to do anything to make ourselves more comfortable. In the early summer of 1915, thirty-five British officers were sent to Cologne to be imprisoned in cells as a reprisal against the alleged maltreatment of German submarine crews. The majority of this number went from Crefeld. After two months or more, the reprisal having ended, they came back, looking very white and ill.

Sometime in the month of June of this year a successful escape was made by three Russians, and three others who got out of the camp the following night were re-caught. Apparently they crossed the Dutch frontier but got tied up in swampy ground and had to return across the frontier into German territory again, in search of a way out of this bad stretch of country. It was while attempting this that they were seen by a German patrol and re-captured.

The whole affair was badly managed. The theory which many prisoners held and worked upon, consisted of allowing each small party twenty-four hours start, so that they might have a good chance of getting across the frontier, some eighteen miles away, before the next lot tried, who if caught at once would cause the Germans to discover the departure of others at the nominal roll-call always held after an attempt to escape. If anyone is missed at these roll-calls the frontier guards are warned by wire.

The frontier is guarded just the same, whether an escaped prisoner is reported "out" or not, so getting away unknown is not a necessity. Of this I am absolutely certain from after knowledge of the conditions, but of course nobody knew definitely what was the best course of action at that time.

The mentality of the Boche, on the subject of escape, is curious. In the early days, anyone who tried to escape and was caught was the subject of particular dislike among the Germans, besides suffering his usual term of punishment in cells.

I suppose becoming accustomed to these attempts altered their point of view, as latterly indifference towards evil-doers of this nature was displayed by them and the punishment term of cells was administered and given with the same lack of interest or emotion as the matron of a boys' preparatory school displays on dosing her charges all round with medicine.

During the first winter in prison we built up a library, which eventually became a large affair with a librarian and a room to itself.

Some prisoners managed to continue playing cards from their first days in prison until I left, and I suppose will continue to do so without ceasing until the day of their release. Personally, after the first year I spent in captivity I hated the sight of a card and played very seldom.

The orchestra, from modest beginnings, grew into a really excellent institution. Most of the instruments were hired from the town of Crefeld.

The main difficulty with which our theatrical manager had to contend, was the lack of material for "girls" in the caste. However, practise and hard training turned out some passable ones in time. The French were more fortunate in this respect than the English. They are all born actors it seems, and they found two or three really excellent male "actresses." The Russians also produced theatrical displays, but were not so persevering in that respect as the French and British.

Periodically the camp used to be visited by German officers on leave from the front. We used to stare at them and they at us, and beyond the necessary salute, took no particular notice of each other.

One thing about the uniform of German officers drew our attention. Although the top half of them appeared smart enough, they always looked sloppy about the legs. Often one would see a German officer with a reasonably well-cut coat, but his breeches would be perfectly impossible. His leggings were worse than his breeches and looked as if they must have been picked up at a second-hand clothes dealer's. They never fitted, and besides giving their wearers legs the same shape all the way down, generally ended off with their edges half an inch clear of the boots all the way round.

The leather of these leggings looked as if it was made of papier-mach?. Being generally of a light yellowish-brown colour they at any rate matched the boots, for the latter were nearly always of that particularly aggressive tone of yellow often seen in the shop-windows in England. The German officer seems to like this colour and has it preserved by his servant, whereas we get rid of it at once.

I suppose these officers in their new uniforms criticised the generally unkempt appearance of the English officers in prison extremely unfavourably, not realising that anything is good enough for a prison, and the less new stuff we got from "home" the less unimportant work we gave to the hard-worked tailors endeavouring to cope with the millions of uniforms required by our growing armies.

In the Spring of 1916 we were allowed by the British Government to give our "paroles" for purposes of "walks" and other recreation.

This enabled us to go to the dentist in the town. This dentist, although extremely short-sighted, did not do such bad work, provided you found the hole for him. He did his best for us and his charges were extraordinarily reasonable. These visits to the dentist were naturally very popular, as they enabled us to see new sights and get away from the horrible prison for a few hours. The dentist scored heavily, as he always had a waiting-list and continuous work to do for the prisoners.

As a man he was about as unfit for war as anyone could imagine, and yet they called him up eventually. Being a weedy specimen, small and pasty-faced, with such short-sight that he had the greatest difficulty in seeing anything, he had been returned as totally exempt time after time by the army doctors. But during the winter of 1916-1917, the weeding-out committee of Germans arrived at Crefeld and once more he was examined. To everyone's surprise, and to his most of all, they passed him fit, and off he had to go. It cheered one up to see them need such a man in their armies.

The commandant, who, together with the vast majority of Germans, believed in a great German victory over the whole world in 1914, began his career as our chief gaoler as an autocrat of the Prussian type. Various objectionable things were done by his orders. Not the least objectionable of these was the stopping of smoking, when Major Vandeleur escaped in December 1914. After a fortnight we regained our tobacco and were allowed to smoke until a similar episode occurred, when the same penalty was imposed.

Sometime in the Spring of 1915, three French officers attempted to escape, but at the last minute, having already gained the outside of the camp, came back into the prison, and in so doing were fired upon by a German sentry who saw them. As the names of these officers were not known to the German authorities, they ordered a roll-call and demanded their names from the senior French officer. Naturally the request was not granted, so the commandant said that all smoking would be stopped for all officers of the camp, unless the names were forthcoming at once. Again he was disappointed, and the tobacco was once more collected. This time most of the parcels of tobacco were filled with lumps of coal and other unimportant trifles, while we smoked, like schoolboys, on the sly. Up the chimney was the favourite place for this.

During the summer of 1915 the commandant changed his tone a bit, and steadily improved from that time forward. Eventually there arrived a time when we could consider him a fair and just commandant, and although no friend of England or the English, he managed to get on very well with his English prisoners.

The French, however, were never able to satisfy their consciences on the subject sufficiently to look upon him as anything but one of the worst. This was too severe. The commandant complained that when he passed them, they would turn their backs on him, in order to avoid having to salute him.

Relations between the English and the allies were always of the best. About half the English preferred the Russians, while the other half preferred the French.

There were many amusing incidents constantly occurring, if one could raise sufficient sense of humour to enjoy them.

One typical example of the way in which we got some amusement out of our guards happened one morning when a German fatigue party was in the barracks loading up a wagon. One of the men had taken off his uniform cap and hung it up by the entrance to one of the buildings. Along came a certain English officer, interested in anything which might assist him to escape, saw the cap, snatched it up and hid it inside his coat, while passing into the building.

Ten minutes or so later, the work being finished, the German soldier looked round for his cap. Meanwhile, the story of the annexation of the cap had gone the round of the prison, so, when the wretched Boche passed along the front of the building with his bald pate shining in the sunlight, he had to run the gauntlet of a crowd of heads peering from all the windows and roaring with laughter at him.

For a long time, I, like the majority of Englishmen, was in a room half-English, half-French. We really got on very well together, but the usual rock upon which French and English split, cropped up in our case. We English wanted a fair proportion of the windows open; the French on the other hand wanted them shut, complaining of "les courants d'air mortels" .

A compromise was the only possible solution of this universal trouble. On one occasion our allied friends received a consignment of live snails from France, which they proceeded to cook with garlic on a small spirit stove in our room. The smell was appalling. I had to bolt from the room, although I am not over particular. The odour of snails hung about for days afterwards.

These same friends of ours took up fret-sawing as a hobby. Have you ever tried to live in a room in which five or six fret-saws are working for hours at a time? They used to commence work before breakfast sometimes. However, we stuck it without complaining for months.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet